When I was ten years old I was best friends with my neighbor Walter.  I was madly, unconditionally and pathetically in love with him.  I had vivid dreams of us getting married and having potato sack races with with our adopted Asian babies at family reunions.  Unfortunately when it came to me, Walter thought of me strictly as a friend.  If that wasn’t bad enough he treated me like I had a penis.

“Hey dude!” he would say as a greeting and punch me hard in the arm.  

“I have a pair of working ovaries ya know!” I’d say quietly to myself as I rubbed the newly developing bruise on my bicep.  This was of course a lie since I hadn’t entered puberty yet and my ovaries were as dormant as a diabetic bear in hibernation.

“Huh?” he’d ask distracted.

“GI Joe! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! MacGyver! Love me!” I’d respond in a way that I hope showed him I was completely cool with him thinking I was a boy and the fact that he didn’t want to dry hump me or my ovaries.

One summer day Walter ran excitedly over to my house with a huge smile on his face.

“My sister offered to take us on a bike ride!” he told me with a grin.

This may not seem like news, but to me at the time it was huge.  You see, a couple weeks before Walter and I had gotten in serious trouble for throwing water balloons at unsuspecting passing cars and since than we were not allowed to do anything without adult supervision.  His sister, being fourteen, was basically an adult and her taking us on a bike ride was the first bit of fun we would have had in almost a month. 

My life in those preceeding weeks was so strict and regimented by my parents it felt like I was in prison.  It was so bad that a couple days before I had asked my mom if she wanted to join a gang with me and if she preferred the Bloods over the Crypts.  One evening I dropped the soap in the shower and was too nervous to bend over and pick it up.  Not because I feared prison anal rape, but because there was a spider that lived in the drain and I was afraid of him. 

So when Walter told me we could go on a bike ride it felt like a huge weight of haunted water balloons had been lifted off my shoulders. 

“No way!” I said happily and clapped my hands.  If I had a beret I would have thrown it in the air Mary Tyler Moore style.  I was that fucking excited.

So off we went on our merry way, two excited, activity starved children and one extremely bored teenager.  As we pedaled along I couldn’t help but notice how adorable Walter looked.  He rode his ten speed like a wild stallion. 

“Maybe one day Walter will ride me like a wild stallion!” I thought to myself.  I didn’t exactly understand that thought, but I had seen enough covers of romance novels to know it was a possibility and I hoped one day it might happen. 

I was thinking about Walter and wondering if the wind flowing through my hair made me look sexy like Julia Roberts when I lost control of my bike and drove directly into a ditch.

Now maybe this is my imagination, but this wasn’t any typical ditch.  It was common knowledge in the neighborhood that it was dangerous and a hazard.  This “ditch” was basically a 7 foot deep hole in the ground where children’s dreams went to die.  Being as accident prone as I am my parents had warned me about it for years.

“Always be careful around that ditch Stephanie!” They would tell me in worried voices. “It’s so deep my voice echoes in it!”

So when I fell in it that summer day I was 100% sure I was going to die.

“So this is how it all ends,” I thought to myself as I fell.  “I always assumed it would be alcohol poisoning.”

I landed with a loud, painful thud and when I looked up both Walter and his sister were staring horrified down at me.

“Dude!” Walter said with concern.  “Are you OK?”

“Yeah!” I gasped.  “I just landed on my spine!”  Since my parent’s idea of bike safety consisted solely of a bell on my handlebars that I could ring in a case of emergency I was lucky I wasn’t paralyzed.  I shakily stood up and brushed dirt off my clothes.

Seeing that I was alright relief quickly washed over Walter’s face. 

“That…. was…. awesome!” he said with glee.

His sister’s facial expression went from concern to boredom to annoyance.

“Well this is just great,” she said.  “How are we going to get her out of there?”

I was so happy and relieved I wasn’t dead I hadn’t even thought about how I was going to get out.

“Do you have a rope ladder at home?” I asked her.

She ignored me and lit a cigarette.  She turned to Walter, “I say we just leave her down there.”  I was almost positive his sister was serious about leaving me to rot in that hole. 

The rush of adrenaline I experienced from surviving this ordeal had ended and I realized how dark and creepy it was at the bottom of a neverending ditch all alone.  I thought about the ghosts of the hundreds of children who had probably died down there and was panicked at the possibility that they still haunted its dirt walls.  My mind began playing tricks on me.

“Oh my God I think I see a skeleton!” I shouted up to them.

“Stephanie I’m pretty sure that’s a pipe.”

“OK I don’t want you to alarm you, but there’s definitely a human skull down here!”

“Nope that’s a rock.” 

“Than why is it moving?!”

“It’s not moving.”

I think Walter could sense my fear and anxiety.  ”You OK dude?” he asked curiously.  He really was my Prince Charming, my knight in shining armor.

“I ache for you,” I whispered.

“Huh?”

Suddenly, a giant, hairy spider shot out of the dirt and ran across my shoe. “I said GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

“OK relax!” he said taking charge.  “I’m going to get help!”

“The Hell you are!” I shouted back up at him.  “You aren’t leaving me here!”

“It’s OK!” he said.  “I’ll be right back!”

I had seen enough scary movies by than and acted appropriately after he said this.

“I’m going to fucking die down here aren’t I?”

I didn’t die.  Walter returned 15 minutes later with my Dad and I immediately started crying with relief.  He stared down at me standing pitifully at the bottom of this hole, sighed heavily and hung his head.  I took this as as sign that he was either really relieved I was alright or he thought I was retarded.  He helped me out of the ditch and I leaped gratefully into his arms.

“Thank you for saving me Dad!” I sobbed into his neck.

“There, there,” he said awkwardly, probably having to restrain himself from throwing me back into the ditch.

Walter never thought of me more than a friend.  Ten years after this incident he married a stripper.  So I guess dreams really do come true.  His dreams, not mine.