When I was a wee young thing, before I became the very
reasonable, perpetually serious adult I am today, I used to stay up at night
and wait for Peter Pan. Any minute, I remember
believing, the magical boy with the mischievous shadow would fly through my
window, and off to Neverland we’d go.
It sounds all very whimsical and imaginative, but I took
this dream very seriously. I was a lot
like Wendy Moira Angela Darling, with an adventurous spirit and an affinity for
long antiquated nightgowns. Who better
to be a mother to the Lost Boys? Nevertheless,
there was one night when I realized Peter Pan wasn’t coming for me. “If Peter wanted to be with you,” I told myself,
“he would have come for you by now.” I
was relationship-wise even before He’s
Just Not That Into You debuted. I
closed my eyes and went to sleep.
Now, this story is only cute and sweet because I was about four
years old. And I really, really, wish it
had ended there. But the way I felt
about Peter Pan resurrected itself when I was in middle school, and the P.J.
Hogan film of Peter Pan came out,
starring Jeremy Sumpter:
Look at that face! I
was 13, overly dramatic, and in the middle of an awkward phase. He was perfectly beautiful and sparkly, but
not in a creepy Edward Cullen way. This,
to me, was love.
One of the side effects of being in love with Jeremy Sumpter
was drastic mood swings. “Sometimes I’m
so happy, because he exists, but other times I’m sad, because we’re not
together!” I bemoaned to my mother, who struggled to keep a straight face. My sister mocked me mercilessly, but I didn’t
mind. “Someday you’ll be in love, too,”
I’d say, “and then you will know how it feels.”
She would run away screaming with laughter, and I would shake my head mournfully. She was so innocent and naïve.
Aside from my immediate family, however, I kept this love a
secret. I was afraid of it being
dismissed as a crush, which, of course, was trivializing and absurd. I refused to have a deep and true love like
ours tarnished by nonbelievers. I knew
we would get married one day. And thus,
I began to prepare.
This is where things start to get embarrassing. (Start?
Because they weren’t before?) I
scoured every Jeremy Sumpter fan website known to preteens. I learned pool and basketball, just because
those were his hobbies. I still remember
that his dog was named “Bear,” and that his favorite athlete was Barry
Bonds. I had no idea who Barry Bonds was
at the time, but I clung to every bit of information I could find; it would all
just serve to bring me closer to him.
I also wrote Jeremy Sumpter a fan letter. To be clear, it was not a love letter; I knew
he would find that incredibly creepy, so I was like, “I really respect your
work. Also, I live in LA, so maybe I’ll
see you at the grocery store sometime!”
Ah, the classic grocery store line.
Works every time.
Apparently, however, I wasn’t destined to meet Jeremy
Sumpter. That was my father’s fate. It was at a golf tournament, and my dad was
following Tiger Woods. He heard a
familiar voice behind him: “Dad! Can you
believe that drive?! He’s amazing!” It was the voice of a young boy with the
slightest of speech impediments. …Could
it be? He turned around. It was.
When I got home from school that fateful day, my dad handed
me the guide to the Target World Challenge, 2004. I pretended to think it was cool, until my
dad told me to open it up and look inside.
I found this, and promptly fell apart emotionally:
I wish I could tell you that I was so incredibly happy that,
with a little fairy dust, I could have flown off the floor. Instead, I became hysterical, convinced that
my father was mocking my love. I threw
myself on the couch, choking on my sobs and screeching in adolescent agony. How could I live with a family that refused
to take their future son-in-law seriously?!?
Didn’t they know that in my dreams, Jeremy and I were already in the
hand-holding stage of our relationship?!?
Of course, by the end of the evening, I had been told the
whole story, and I knew the autograph was real.
I slept with it under my pillow that night, and for many nights
thereafter, imagining it to be the sole link between soul mates. Did Jeremy ever think about me, too? Did an odd, anonymous girl in Abercrombie and
Fitch sweatpants wander into his dreams at night?
I’m not sure if I ever made the conscious decision to get
over Jeremy Sumpter. I just Googled him,
however, and learned that he has a girlfriend.
I’m strangely not affected by this would-be tragic news. I suppose that, somewhere along the line, I
flew away from my fantasy of romantic Neverland love and decided to grow up,
just like Wendy. I am left only with a
sincerely sentimental attachment to a golf tournament guide, and a severely
embarrassing story that I never should have chosen to share. Oh, well.
Second star to the right, and straight on ‘til morning!
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