“Weird Al” Yankovic has shared a touching story about reconnecting with a former crush that may just be the only sweet moment of 2020.
Be warned: the following story is the stuff of cheesy Christmas movies but it’s all very true. The master of satire and parody took a moment to be sincere for a change to share his heartwarming story.
In an Instagram post, Yankovic explained how he unexpectedly reconnected with a girl he had a crush on all the way back in ninth grade. It never worked out with the girl in question, Patrice, but the long-haired musician clearly did enough to leave an impression on her.
“I was 12 years old in the 9th grade – younger than my classmates, and (as you may possibly be able to imagine) pretty awkward, shy and nerdy,” Yankovic wrote. “And I had a crush on Patrice Y., the girl who sat directly in front of me in math class (because the seats were all arranged in alphabetical order for some arbitrary reason). Of course, Patrice would never in a million years have suspected that I had a crush on her, because like I explained… painfully shy.”
When he was finally ready to make his move, Yankovic did what any weird, artsy child would do and drew a portrait of Patrice. And again like any weird, artsy child would do, young Yankovic pulled it off in as awkward a manner as possible: “Because I didn’t want to give her the impression that I LIKED her or anything, I also drew pictures of EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE CLASS and handed those out as well, just to throw her off the scent,” he revealed, admitting that he tried to make her picture “a little bit better” than everyone else’s, just to keep things super subtle.
“Anyway, everybody seemed to like their drawings, and, as you may have predicted, my love life remained completely dormant for the next several years,” he continued.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb-Mce9VpmY
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A lost love story for the ages has finally found a happy conclusion though. Many decades later, “Weird Al” was casually scrolling through his Twitter feed when he noticed a woman talking about how she used to sit in front of him back in ninth grade math class. “Being slightly less shy at my current advanced age, I decided to follow up on this: I DM’ed her and asked if by any chance her name was Patrice. Turns out, it was. It was her – my 9th grade crush,” he said.
“I then followed up and asked, ‘Hey, by any chance do you happen to remember that one time I drew pictures of everybody in class?’ A minute later she sent me this photo. She had saved it all these years. I just felt like telling this story because, well… 2020 was arguably a pretty sucky year overall, but there were some real moments of joy sprinkled in here and there – and for me, this was definitely one of them.”
What a lovely story to close out the dumpster fire year that was 2020. See Yankovic’s youthful art skills for yourself. How could Patrice not have fallen in love with him immediately when she received that painting?
https://twitter.com/timfullerton/status/1341776063026900993?s=21
