The First Time Women Found Me Cute

I remember the first time I realized that women (yes, women) found me cute. Not cute like a baby. Not cute like a pair of shoes. But cute like adorable. Cute like ...Damn. I could just eat him up. Cute. Yeah. Like that.

The characters: Me at thirteen. My best friend at thirteen also. Exactly three weeks older than me. And a woman. Yes, a woman. But not just any woman. This was one attractive woman. Make you nervous woman. So fine, she doesn't even notice 13 year old boys sneaking glances at her. She was serious. I'm so sincere.

The setting: A department store that we cut through to get to the mall. My friend had a puzzling obsession with Swatch watches.

Remember those??

Anyway. Every time we went to the mall, we had to look at the watches. He already had more watches than I had sneakers. But it didn't matter. It was one of many obsessions that pubescent boys would have growing up. There were comic books, Transformers, freestyle bikes, sneakers, Hilfiger© shirts, music, baggy jeans, Starter© caps and jackets, Carhart© jackets, Designer© markers, graffiti and then girls.

[Author's note: Please excuse my excessive use of the © symbol. I just learned the keyboard shortcut and I'm a little excited.]

Now remember, this was the time of no internet. So there was no going online to their website to see what was the latest and greatest. We had to do things the old fashioned way...actually go to the stores. Man we had it rough. LOL.

So here we are. At the watch counter. I show interest at the initial arrival but that quickly wanes. Now I'm looking elsewhere. Looking for nothing in particular. Just looking. Still looking. He's finally done. We move on.

We're walking. We're talking...about young boy things. He says something to me. I turn to say something back and I see her. This black woman, beautiful by a 9th grader's standards...with her make up on and her hair braided down the back, was heart-stopping. She was working behind a counter. I don't remember what those cases contained. They could have had free money in them and I wouldn't have noticed. She looked that good.

I tell my boy to look. I have no couth so I point right at her. She doesn't see me or us. We were about 30 feet away. Even still, she's too busy being beautiful.

Still on some young boy behavior because I'm still a young boy, I dare him to go and ask her where the bathroom is. He pauses and grins and then agrees to do it. I'm excited, surprised and hype all at the same time. He turns and starts walking over to her.

Not 5 paces later, he starts giggling like...you guessed it...a young boy displaying young boy behavior. I follow suit with the giggling. Now we're laughing in unison. He says I made him laugh. I'm laughing too hard to argue.

Right at that moment, I decided to man up. For those unfamiliar with manning up, know that there are several levels of manupism. This was the very first level. It was time to show and prove. I was going to walk up to her. And when I got up to her, I was going to be smooth. And while I was being smooth, I was going to ask her...ummm ...where ...uh ...the bathroom was. Yeah that's it. No, really, that was the best I could come up with. I was a young boy. Fresh outta the eight grade. That's as clever as it gets. Sorry.

So my heart's pounding something serious. Forget about feeling it thump in my chest, I could HEAR it!!! But I'm at the counter now. She still doesn't see me.

I say to her (like my mom taught me), "Excuse me."

She turns, "Hi. How can I help you?"

But wait. She says it with a British accent. Whoa. Hold up. I wasn't prepared for that. I had never heard a woman speak with an accent like that…much less a Black woman.

For what seemed like an eternity, the words bounced around in my adolescent head. And that was followed by the sweet scent of her perfume hitting my nostrils. It was pretty much a done deal for me. All that was left was for me to seal it. With what you ask? Try my voice cracking. Yes, that's correct. There was no better indication of me being a young boy than my voice cracking when I asked her where the bathroom was. I was mortified. I think I shrunk a little.

She flashed one of those "Aww. How cute is he?" smiles and pointed me to the nearest one.

I thanked her, walked away and met up with my boy. He asked what happened. I told him.

He said, "I'm happy I didn't go."

I was happy I did.