The purest form of love? It’s not that of a parent for a child or of one spouse for another. It’s the love a little boy has for his first true friend.

Big Guy has had pals before, dating back to the little girl who had his back and found his bear in preschool. He had a best buddy last year, but that was more a friendly rivalry with emphasis on the “rivalry” part.

This year is different. Big Guy has fallen head over heels into his first man crush, on a classmate we’ll call D. If we lived a few blocks closer, one would be crooning under the other’s window every night.

They’re in the same class at school, though D is about six months older and a bit bigger. That means that they’re pretty evenly matched athletically, with enough of a slight edge to D that it keeps Big Guy on his toes. On his toes? Is that possible when a boy has been swept off his feet?

When the art supplies come out so we can make Christmas cards for families, Big Guy instead wants to craft a greeting for D. When he calls D’s house and there’s no answer, he frets. “What if he doesn’t call back? What if he never calls back?”

When his room is so torn up it’s practically eligible for a FEMA grant, only the possibility of a visit from D will send Big Guy scurrying to right the wreckage. “I have to straighten out up here, so we’ll have room to play.”

Signing up for the coming indoor soccer season isn’t enough. Big Guy has to make sure he gets on the same team as D. “I have to!” he pleads, as if I alone can settle the matter.

D shows up to play wearing his Mini Me Army uniform that’s a replica of his dad’s; Big Guy changes with “Clark Kent in a phone booth” speed. D forgets his back pack on the school bus; Big Guy makes sure he retrieves it.

In a way they’re an unlikely match, Big Guy with his boundless loquaciousness, D with his quiet restraint. Maybe that’s why it works. D readily follows Big Guy’s lead most of the time, while Big Guy in response tones down his normal bossiness to something that sounds like a suggestion.

With an adult romantic relationship, the yin-yang contrast sometimes cooks but just as often boils over. With little boy love, at least in this case, it clicks.

I wonder what Big Guy’s planning for Valentine’s Day.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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