Bobby in the Flesh!

Thinking back to my 'tween crushes.... 

Remember 16 Magazine and Tiger Beat?  (Someone just told me that Tiger Beat is still around—is there really a call for that? Isn't even the name a little dated now?)

I was never really into Tiger Beat, but I was hot for the new issue of 16 Magazine the minute it hit the stands. I'd run downtown to Tom's Pharmacy....

I even remember the cover of this issue. ---->

I think that guy next to Bobby was on Dark Shadows. Remember that? (Wait, what are they doing in that pelican's bill...?)

So, my major crushes were on Bobby Sherman (Here Come the Brides), David Cassidy (The Partridge Family--like everybody doesn't know this), and Donnie Osmond (The... er, yeah.)

My close cousins, Shawnee and Sheila, loved the Cowsills, but for some reason they just never appealed to me. We would debate the merits of our opposing crushes ceaselessly.

I bet it was the stray eye that won
me over. I've always been a sucker
for that kind of "difference."

But here's something a little deeper that I remember. Bobby Sherman was not my only crush from Here Come the Brides. I was hopelessly in love with Bridget Hanley, his on-screen girlfriend. I had fantasies about her visiting me all the time. I would even act them out when I was playing alone. 

And even more intriguing is that, at what age—12? 13?—I knew to hide my crush on Bridget. Of course, to do that, I used Bobby Sherman as the "beard." For every picture of Bridget that I cut out of 16, I cut out one of Bobby, too. Behind Bobby's pictures pinned on my wall and bulletin board, were my secret pictures of Bridget. I'd flip Bobby up to see Bridget when I wanted to. But when no one—not even my cousins—were around.

If I want to get honest about it, I really wasn't all that into Bobby. And I just wanted David Cassidy and Donny Osmond to be my brothers. At that age, and in that time, and in a town where I had never been introduced to the idea of homosexuality, how did I know to hide my crush on a female? I don't need to ask how I could know I was attracted to her. I knew.

Her original name was
Bridget Swackhammer.
She's 70 here.