Let me tell you about the moment I realized I had a crush. On the person that has changed my life more than he knows. It was my senior year of high school. I’m thinking it must have been January or February of 2011. I got off the bus, and instead of walking around the side of the school to the rear entrance of the band room, like I sometimes did, I went in through the entrance closest to the bus loop and pushed my way through the halls. It was cold outside. He and I always met in the band room, every morning, like clockwork. But that morning, he was going to the office to get his parking permit. He had just gotten his driver’s license. It was a totally normal morning, nothing unusual or extraordinary was going on. I was walking towards the band room across campus, trumpet case in hand, still a little foggy from getting up at 5:30. When I saw him walking towards me through the students, it was just another ordinary moment, for everyone else in that hallway. But it was unexpected. Our eyes met, and in that moment, I melted. My heart stopped briefly and my stomach twisted, and his eyes were the the most important things in the universe, and as we passed each other and said hi, I smiled, and I didn’t stop smiling. For a long time, I didn’t stop smiling. It was electric, and it never ceases to amaze me. Because it wasn’t a crazy, dramatic, romantic moment. There were a lot of experiences that, by all logic, should be so much more profound. But that morning was important. Maybe not to anyone else, but to me. It laid the foundation of most of the crazy, exciting, dramatic, tragic, and romantic moments I’ve had in my life since. I would likely be somewhere completely different in life and as a person were it not for him, and that utterly blows me away. One look we shared in a crowded high school hallway was pivotal to my life and who I would eventually become. I had no idea.