She's like, Alan, you don't even know me. And I was like, yeah, that's kind of the point of a crush, right?

Yeah.

Welcome to how to. I'm Courtney Martin. Do you remember your first crush? I totally do. His name was Michael Mahoney. Shout out Michael Mahoney. Anyway, it was second grade. My older brother and his friends asked people out. Like you would say, do you want to go out with me in this like really formal intense way? So I did that. One day on the playground, I mustered up the courage to say, Michael, do you want to go out with me? And he said, go where?

And it was at that moment that I realized I had no idea what it actually meant to go out with someone.

And I kind of skulked away completely mortified. Though we may have countless crushes in our

lifetime, and if you're anything like me, countless mortifications, there is something about the first one that just sticks.

Oh, my God.

I was in first grade.

She was in all the smart classes, and I was having a lot of trouble with math, just being able to do addition and subtraction and stuff like that.

I just remember, like, even then I knew she was totally out of my league.

That's Allen.

He's in his 30s now, but in some ways he still feels like that shy first grader.

Ever since then, I've just really struggled with my own self-image and anxiety. And like if I do

develop like the feels for for somebody, then I just kind of like growing to the wall

and becoming obscure and just letting it die and moving on.

Do you remember the first time you actually pushed against that feeling and tried to tell

someone that you had a crush on them?

Yes, I broke out in cold sweats and my tongue went dry, horrible stutter, like hands in my pockets, shoulders hunched, like, hey, you want to go out with me sometime. It's okay if you don't. It's fine. I don't know.

Yeah.

Of course, I could not maintain eye contact because we didn't know then that I have

Asperger's, but I didn't find that out until I was 25, actually.

Asperger's syndrome is now usually referred to as autism spectrum disorder,

...