Thursday, November 18, 2004

Wisdom?

I have to wonder about the completely embittered person that chose to introduce “crush” to the vernacular. England, circa 1875, an Englishman draws deeply from a bottle of something or other, cursing his kinsman for ever having uttered the words “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” and subsequently un-naming some extraordinarily attractive debutante who had not returned his affections:

crush (krush) n. Informal.
1. A usually temporary infatuation.
2. One who is the object of such an infatuation.

Synonymous with: annihilate, beat, bray, break, bruise, buck, comminute, compress, conquer, contriturate, contuse, crease, crowd, crumble, crumple, crunch, defeat, demolish, embrace, enfold, express, extinguish, force down, hurt, jam, kill, mash, mortify, obliterate, overcome, overpower, pound, powder, press, pulverize, push, put down, quelch, quell, romp, ruin, rumple, smash, squash, squeeze, squish, subjugate, total, trample, tread, triturate, vanquish, wreck, etc., etc., etc.

The very word intrinsically indicates an unpleasant end, and yet the majority of the people who carry the title are remembered fondly, if occasionally wistfully. Then there are those who evolve past the “crush” designation, who, if an end is assumed, seem to be remembered not so fondly. It’s not necessarily that there ARE no fond memories, but those are often ignored in order to rationalize the pain of loss away, just as the bad in a relationship is often rationalized away in a desperate attempt to hang on to anything even vaguely resembling love. It’s just a matter of how deeply the scale tips one way or another that makes the difference.

So why not just have crushes on whoever you want and never have relationships?

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