are you sitting down?

I think I have a crush.

I'm going pull a Drew and leave this person nameless until I'm more certain.

After all, I only pulled the strategic meandering past his house...twice...yesterday...


In other news, when I shared this tentative tidbit of information with the fam, they freaked. This led me to some serious pondering as to why I find it so hard to like guys and thus cause such a stir when someone catches my eye.

Enter the eternal room-cleaning quest with yet another commentary on the state of my psyche.

While I was wading through stuff AGAIN yesterday, I came across a newspaper article that my grandma sent me. Before I impart the words of wisdom (?) it contains, allow me to point out few essential facts:

1. This article was published on July 10, 2003. Less than two months after I graduated high school at the absolutely un-nubile age of 18 and almost two months before I even entered that hunting ground we call BYU.

2. This article appeared in the Deseret News and my grandma doesn't even LIVE in Utah. So now she's combing national newspapers to try to explain my condition?

3. The fact that I saved this disturbs me. But at least I can share it with you! It's kind of long, but bear with me:

“Why guys aren’t getting married”
By: Jody Genessy
Deseret Morning News

Men, according to a recent study, are waiting longer than ever to get married. To sum up the Rutgers University report, guys from 25 to 33 aren’t getting hitched because they’re, well, too busy watching “The Bachelor” spin-offs.
The real reasons for the cold-feet epidemic: fear of divorce, children, changes and compromises; and wanting to live up the bachelor life until a “perfect soul mate” comes along.
Your average Utah guy has 10 reasons for remaining, as Brigham Young supposedly referred to bachelors, a “menace to society.”
10. The “something-better-might-be-coming-around-the-corner” syndrome. So you won’t commit to the wonderful woman you’re dating for fear that a model-like babe who watches ESPN and plays Xbox may come along right after you propose? The only person likely to come around the corner is Father Time, and he’s got a bigger-sized pair of pants and a shinier scalp with your name on them.
9. Waiting until your college career is completed. This is usually a four-year process elsewhere, but it takes a decade in Utah once you figure in an LDS mission and all the time you spend trying to get into BYU before “settling” for a state school.
8. You don’t want to leave Mom’s house. Pretty pathetic, right? Look at it this way—no rent and no laundry, no cooking and no cleaning. No long strands of hair clogging up the bathtub drain or 75 pairs of shoes to trip over. Nobody saying that you can’t watch five football games on Saturday, three on Sunday, and one each on Monday and Thursday.
7. You’re trying to meet the expectations of that “150-things-I-demand-in-a-husband” list that all girls prepare in Young Women. If you don’t look like Brad Pitt, have a wallet like Steve Young, or act like Capt. Moroni, good luck.
6. Can’t get a date. All the mid-20s women in your singles ward have already told you, “Let’s just be friends.” And the 18-year-olds tell you, “Thanks, you seem like a nice guy, but NO! YOU REMIND ME OF MY DAD!”
5. Holding out for an eight-cow woman. Or at least someone who doesn’t fall asleep during your mission slide show, who believes the North Dakota Bismarck mission is the best in the world and who doesn’t whine when you’re telling that story for the 3000th time about your favorite companion Elder Kessler getting bitten on the rear by a poodle.
4. Sweet-spirited guys try to cultivate romance and are willing to accept gals for what they are on the inside instead of judging them only by their exterior package, but women these days are alarmingly superficial. Oh wait. That’s men, sorry.
3. Keep getting phone numbers from hotties at night clubs that start with 911. (Operator: “Do you have an emergency?” Bachelor: “YES! I need to get ahold of Betty, she told me to call her here!”)
2. You want to marry a certain sweetie, but Utah girls demand a wedding proposal that is at least as creative as the way they were asked out to prom (which is often just the previous year). Sorry, fellas, but dropping to one knee doesn’t cut it anymore. In other words, don’t bother asking for her hand if you don’t have a fish bowl with a cute card that says, “Out of all the fish in the sea, I want you to marry me,” or a hidden, coded marriage-message buried deep inside a box of Alphabets.
1. You just can’t find a wife. You bachelors have tried, of course. Looked high and low, turned over every rock, searched every singles Web site this side of IAmADeperateManAndNeedAWifeNow.com, and blindly dated every “perfect-for-you” girl whose mom--and the lady at work’s neighbor’s cousin’s friend—set you up with, to no avail.
Stay tuned for another column: Angry single women respond, call shallow bachelors really bad names that can’t be printed.


So I’m assuming she sent this as a comfort. You know, “Don’t worry if you don’t get married in the next two months Meagan, just look at what you have to work with!”

But I can say that while some of this stuff is pretty accurate, there are TONS of boys who don’t fit this image at all. So even though I didn’t get married at 18, I can say that's a good thing because I’ve matured enough to be able to pick out those anomalies from the mainstream.

And I’ve even taken another step in the right direction...

Yep, it’s definitely a crush.