Might as well face it, you’re addicted to love

Miss Virginia is waxing nostalgic these days. She’s been watching Joan of Arcadia with one of the Beloved Offspring, who is, technically, a tween, but will be in the throes of first kisses and first crushes before you can say “pituitary gland.”

As in all shows about the dreaded high school era, there are a large number of crushes on Joan of Arcadia, including a darling first-love story between the title character, Joan, and her oddball pal Adam. Joan is a spiritually sensitive misfit; Adam is an oddball artist with a secret history of family trauma.

Miss Virginia is heavily reminded of her own high school era, whence she spent most of her days as a spiritually sensitive misfit ‘sort of’ dating her own oddball arty friend with family trauma. It was confusing, maddening, and…exhilarating. And although Miss Prude had to consume an entire box of Ho Ho’s when said oddball art friend took her best friend to the prom instead of Virginia Dear, I’d still take a little hit off that young love drug in a heartbeat.

Sigh. Don’t you kind of miss it, darlings?

Truly, high school is hell, and nowhere is it cattier, sillier, or more hellish than in the Deep South. Miss Virginia is ever-so-glad she did not hit her peak as, godforid, a head cheerleader or some other such rubbish. Miss V “likes to think the best of me was waiting just around the bend” in the real world. A late bloomer, Miss Virginia was confused 99% of the time when it came to teenaged members of the opposite sex. There’s an adorable actorboy who plays God in this particular episode. My Darling Offspring would say this boy was ‘hot,’ but I will need to opt for the term ‘jailbait.’ At any rate, the actor boy/’God’, points out that even if you were confused most of the time in high school, adding flirting to the mix certainly meant you were “introducing whole new levels of confusion.”

Still, in spite of the confusion, the heat and the hormones of first crushes and first loves curries its own kind of addiction. And, since Miss Virginia has always been the type of girl that believes love and sex are a mashup of physical and emotional/spiritual chemistry, the intensity of walking with crushes and loves through those first grown-up things, like family traumas and public dating, well, it’s all part of the deliriously heady package. The combination of that physical chemical rush and the emotional upheaval gives one a high that simply does not come with any other age. Now the eldest of my Beloved Offspring, the budding scientist, would say this has only to do with chemical highs and altered brain activity. But I prefer to think it has a little something to do with looking at a naked soul. Either way, that new love thing is addictive, and many Many MANY years of monogamy and parenting has made Miss Prude the teeniest tiniest bit jones-y for just a little bit of that old first-crush feeling.

Are you getting out your yearbooks yet? Googling names? Searching people out at Classmates? Miss Virginia thinks you should. It could be very good for the imagination (if you can get past the Embarrassing Horror that was your hair in 1985.)

Okay, now Miss Virginia highly recommends that you go listen to this on repeat while I write you a little something semi-fictional about a first love. Go on now. Miss V will be back with a bedtime story for you real soon…….