Blue Crush

I have alluded to being an INTP in the past. But I had a train of thought this evening that very clearly elucidates the random nature of my brain.

I started by thinking about an interaction I had with our very steamy FedEx guy, Wolverine, this morning. There is probably a blog all about Wolverine simmering inside of me, but for the time being, let me leave it by saying that no matter how garrulous I am feeling for the other 23 hours, 58 minutes, and 44 seconds of the day, when I am faced with Wolverine, I turn to absolute mush and I’m lucky if I can string the words “good morning” together.  I started wondering what it is about him that turns me so taciturn. Then it occurred to me that I know the word “taciturn” because I saw it on an episode of The Monkees when I was in sixth grade (I also learned “banal” and “insipid” that year because of the same show). And then I began to think about other old ‘60s television shows that I loved, which got me thinking about Bewitched and I can never think about Bewitched without experiencing a pang for Elizabeth Montgomery. Which leads me to the subject of this entry… girl crushes.

In general, I am able to fall into infatuation with just about any walking, talking, breathing man out there and sometimes with a historical figure or a character in a film or a book (Captain Frederick Wentworth, I am specifically referring to you). But a girl crush doesn’t have anything to do with lust or romance like a crush on a guy does. Instead, it is about recognizing characteristics in someone else that I wish I possessed and it is about raising that individual to the level of a role model.

As Samantha Stevens, Elizabeth Montgomery had it all. Not only was she beautiful in a very classic sense, she was enthusiastically clever. She had a loving (albeit quirky) extended family, the patience of a saint, and the matchless ability to seamlessly set wrongs right with a few twitches of her nose and a well-placed comment or two. She could pop over to Paris for lunch and still greet her husband at the door that evening with a cocktail in her hand. She was the girl next door with a history. And to my first grade self, she was absolutely the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen. In fact, she probably still is.

Now, how do you think I felt when I read JazzWax on Sunday and discovered this little picture under the Oddball Album Cover of the Week? You got it, like I was five years old again.

I’ve had many other girl crushes. From 2000-2005, I kept pictures of both Ashley Banfield and Tina Fey on the inside of my medicine cabinet so I could gaze upon those brilliant, boundary-pushing girls in glasses and hope that I’d grow some balls like them. My recent crushes are Zooey Deschanel and Emma Stone, who both possess a quirky lightheartedness, an indelible youthfulness, and a sweetness that camouflages something unexpected. It seems as though when I admire a woman, it is because of the qualities for which she’s known, qualities that I feel I need to develop at the time.

But in the end, the origin of all girl crushes is Samantha Stevens: gracious, poised, and genuinely able to do anything she sets her mind to… all the things a first grader hopes to some day emulate.