memory lane
my friend gave me these vans this weekend. i mentioned that i was thinking of getting another pair of vans, and she went into her closet and gave these to me. she said they weren’t comfortable on her.
of course, she had no idea that these sneakers are one of my fondest memories from junior high.
for those of you who aren’t familiar with vans, i should let you know that these vans checkered slip-ons haven’t changed in over 20 years. like converse chuck taylors, these sneakers are indistinguishable from those popular back when i was in junior high. more specifically, they are the same as the sneakers worn by my first crush, zavig.
as i’ve mentioned before, i have a terrible memory. i don’t remember much about junior high. but i definitely remember zavig and his black and white checkered vans. i was so infatuated with him! i suppose you all want to know what was it about him that i liked so much, but all i can really remember about him (other than his black and white vans) is that he was sort of a rebellious bad boy type. or at least the closest thing amity junior high school had.
i don’t think i ever did anything about the crush. i’m sure i flirted with him in my seventh grade way, but i never had a friend tell him i liked him or anything. i think i had enough sense to know that i’d only embarrass myself; boys like him didn’t like girls like me. he didn’t go to our high school, i’m not sure where he went after junior high. i moved on to other crushes in high school, but over the past twenty-three years, black and white checkered vans have always reminded me of zavig.
i actually almost bought myself a pair of black and white checkered vans last summer. i ended up getting sucked in by the pink and brown ones, because “everything looks better in pink,” as i always say. but i was tempted by the black and white ones in honor of my old crush. buying the sneakers reminded me of zavig and i googled him. he’s pretty easy to google, not a lot of “zavigs” in this country. i was tempted to try to find his email address and tell him about how he was my first crush and that buying checkered vans reminded me of him, but then i felt like a stalker and was glad i didn’t buy the black and white vans.
out of respect for his privacy, i won’t reveal the details of what i found through my googling, but i will say that what i found most interesting is that zavig does not seem to be living up to his former “rebellious bad boy” rep in the least. he appears to have left his troublemaking days behind him to become quite the upstanding citizen and family man. ironically, now i’m the rebellious one compared to him. the “girl next door” that was too dorky and boring to be on the young rebel’s radar has grown up to be more subversive than her bad boy crush. maybe he “grew out of” his rebellious phase long ago. he probably even forgot all about those checkered vans he used to wear every day. meanwhile, i guess i grew out of channelling my rebellious streak into crushing on bad boys and decided to live my life the way i wanted to live, rather than just lusting after the boys who live that way.
now through a fortuitous twist of fate, i am in possession of my very own pair of black and white checkered vans. i feel like the torch has been passed, and i’m officially the zavig of the 31st grade.
if zavig decides to google himself, he’ll surely find this post and hopefully be amused. is it less stalkery to blog about an old crush than to try to email him? i hope so. but it would be seriously cool to get an email from good old zavig some day.
technorati tags: vans junior high crush rebel google
gosh, such excellent shoes and such an excellent name! i’m in love with that name now! and i love what you wrote. a lot.
so i checked out my junior high “bad boy” crush, too (funny, i’ve googled almost everyone else but never him) and there are too many people with his name: pastors, people with their own polka shows, etc. his first name was jason.
i’m gonna look for my checked chucks sometime soon — they look like them from here!
he was in my technology class and we sat at the same table and i got a friend to take a picture of us together (and then i proceeded to put it in a plastic heart frame — aha!). if i find it, i’ll show it to you…
i would LOVE to see that picture! i wonder if i have a picture of zavig. i’ll have to look.
I just posted about looking for a crush I had in grade school. How strange is that?? I actually had a dream about him last night, prompting a (fruitless) google search today at lunch. I was even thinking about scanning my grade 6 class photo of him to post with my plea.
I don’t mention the crush part on my blog, in case the boy reads it and questions me. In the dream I had, I kissed the crush. The boy is already a wee bit nervous about the girl thing that I don’t need to make him insecure about another boy
Mine wasn’t a bad boy. He was teeny and cute, like a cherub. I started my crush in grade 6, and in grade 8 he asked me to go to graduation with him. I was so happy!
in the dream, were you both grown ups?
so funny that both posted about old crushes today…
oh, grade 6 photo!!!!
Coming from Australia I had no idea what Vans where but they look realy comfortable and wish I could get a pink pair, cause yes everything in pink is better. As for high school crush, I didnt really have one of note butI remeber my first boyfriend and well I will have to go and google him to see if I can find him, he reminded me of Leiff Garret, yes I am showing my age, he rode a skate board and had long wavy blonde hair.
Now you guys have got me doing it! I Googled for mine, and found that his name is more common than it would seem (his first name is Ezra). All I could discover was that he won a writing award his first year in college. Oh well. I got over him in high school anyway when I realized that his “cooler than thou” demeanor made him off-putting and not sexy. (Hopefully he’s wisened up a bit in that regard himself.)
High School crush? I was the high school crush! lmao Well to all the girls who were like 3 years younger than me hahahaha Isn’t it funny how when you’re 16 it’s just not right to be with someone who’s 13 however now I’m 25 and my ex is 35.
but there’s nothing wrong with the 35 year old women getting themselves some 25 year old booty!
it’s so fun to have australian vistors. and kharman, don’t worry about showing your age - i just admitted to being in 31st grade!
that was so much fun to read! i love hearing about old crushes. i don’t think i’ve ever googled some of mine… i should! i totally hope zavig googles his name and your blog shows up. i’d be so completely flattered if that ever happened to me. all i wanted to add was that i love those shoes cuz they remind me of spicoli (sp?) in “fast times at ridgemont high”.
hey cool shoes!
I loved those shoes. I’ve gotta tell you it was pretty funny googling my own name and finding “memory lane”. I thought it was excellent and I was totally surprised by it, as well as flattered. By the way, is that weird of me to google my own name?, because I do that once in a while - just to see if there’s anything bad, you know, FBI’s 10 most wanted list, etc. Just Kidding!
just a couple points of note -
I was at my aunts about a month ago and she was just telling me about how she reconnected with a grade school friend she hadn’t seen in 40 something years and she was saying how great the internet was, and that she had found her in a facebook or something like that. Of course I thought the same thing as you jen, that how weird would that seem if I called someone I hadn’t seen in such a long time. You see, I’m very bad about keeping touch with people in general, but the internet helps. But I guess not that weird.
The moral for everyone is that if you’re contemplating whether or not to call someone that you once knew, you should just go for it. What’s the worst that can happen? Chances are they’ll be glad you did. (or they’ll call you a weirdo stalker and hang up) one or the other.
The other point of note that I thought was funny was almost to the day you wrote this initially, I was in connecticut shopping for vans for my sister who is living in Barcelona now but was back for a week. Apparently vans are like $80 or $90 bucks in Spain. We ended up finding them at DSW for $30 or so. She was torn between the black and white checkered or the light pink and brown checkered.
We decided on the pink/brown (not the bright salmon/brown but the softer pink) because she had gotten the chucky-t, low-top, slip-ons in black/white so we thought it would be good for her to have something to wear when brown shoes are called for.
So the moral here is that after all these years, vans are still cool shoes.
email me at zavigm@netscape.net
anyone else that cares to get in touch with me can do the same, just no spam and no real weirdos please.
Here’s a link
to my new blog that I started so I could throw some info in one place about what I’ve been doing the last 20 years.
peace jen et all
that’s so frigging awesome. you don’t know how stoked i was to get home (i’ve been in vegas for the weekend) and find this comment. and so odd about the vans synchronicity. i have the same ones as your sister, the pale pink and brown. i agree with your thought process. the pale pink and brown match a lot that the black and white don’t match and vice versa.
now i’m off to read zavig’s blog.
I’ve checked back a few times, wondering how long it would take to discover my comment. Not long it seems. I was going to email but I thought it would be better if I posted a comment here first. I hope you enjoy my ramblings about the hell i’ve been up to for the past 20 something years.
I hope vegas was fun. Don’t worry, I know, what happens in vegas stays in vegas. I’ve made quite a few hops over to vegas when I was in so-cal. I’m pretty sure I have a good time, only the details are usually fuzzy.
Anyway - I’m glad I found your blog and we should definitely keep in touch. we’ll have to head out for a beer or something (with trav of course). We actually don’t live that far from each other, you being in md and me in de. Of course I still make the occasional appearance in ct, as my parents still live in orange. As a matter of fact, I’m in ct as I write this.
By the way-
I took the liberty of looking through some of your photos and you really do have a great fashion sense. I love some of your outfits. You look great!
keep in touch.
z