childhood sweethearts

Well, Sarakastic has made such a wonderful list of past loves that there's no competing with it, but all the same, it inspired me to share the males who made my childhood and adolescence ... special. I suppose a few of my celebrity crushes are still slightly odd, but I think I can safely say these are odder. These are not in any particular order except for a vague sort of chronological one.

1) Julian, from the Famous Five. For those unfortunate enough not to have heard of this, it was a series of children's books by the English author Enid Blyton. They were full of adventures and 'gee whiz' and 'jolly good' and 'I say'. Adults were unintelligent, and children could go off on their own and have adventures whenever they pleased. Enid Blyton affected my writing for years, and, as my bio on Halfway Down the Stairs says, she was the first author I wanted to be like. Julian was the virtuous, patriarchal and blonde elder brother of Dick and Anne, and the cousin of George. My falling for him was inevitable.

2) The second fictional character I had a crush on was Logan Bruno, from Ann M. Martin's Babysitters Club. Logan had blonde wavy hair and a Kentucky accent and liked Mary Anne. I still have no idea what a Kentucky accent sounds like, but it seemed very attractive on the page. I can't quite remember why I had such a big crush on him, but it was very real at the time. I had 64 Babysitters Club books, and I sold them all last year on TradeMe, the New Zealand eBay, to a little girl who I hope will enjoy them as much as I did!


3) Christopher Plummer. He was just so handsome in The Sound of Music! That scene where they dance - I could have swooned - although the scene where they kiss always made me laugh. I never realised that he was probably in his sixties or seventies while I was into him, but I'm not sure it would have put me off! He was dashing.




4) Dick van Dyke. How sad is that?! This was because of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins, mainly. The first especially. I loved that he was so clever, and I thought Truly Scrumptious was basically the ideal woman. I wanted to grow up and be like her. Then, in Mary Poppins he sung cool songs and did little dances and had a very weird not-quite-there Cockney accent. Although he did push the goofy thing a bit far at times in that movie.




5) Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker. My brother and sister introduced me to Star Wars when I was about nine, and besides thinking Princess Leia's hair was the prettiest I'd ever seen, I found Mark Hamill rather attractive. I'm a little grossed out by this now, of course, but I cannot deny it! He had cool robot friends, he hung out with ewoks, and he battled evil who was often his own father. Come to think of it, I sometimes had a crush on Darth Vader too. That I cannot understand now. Maybe it was the feeling sorry for him and hoping he had a heart?? Apparently girls like reforming bad men, so that could be it.

6) Jason Behr, from Roswell. My friends and I were totally into him when we were thirteen or so, and every morning at school after an episode of Roswell, we would dissect it together as soon as we saw each other. He was so studly with his black hair and chiseled features and troubled past. We were so into him that on one youth group camp my friend brought along a big poster of him so we wouldn't have to go without seeing him for three whole days.

7) Fez from That 70s Show, played by Wilmer Valderrama. This is the one I am most weirded out by. I actually thought the whole Fez thing was hot - not funny, just hot. The tight shirts and the funny accent and everything - I took it completely seriously. Thank goodness I didn't tell many people about it; I just had a big poster of him on my wall, rather like this photo. I even thought of writing him fan mail.

Well, that's about it, although there were a few more small crushes. I'm worried that the having a crush on a fictional person thing is quite weird, but I suppose that it's because we didn't have a TV until I was about thirteen or fourteen - anyway, that's my excuse!