Do you remember being in love? Not the cozy, "Where's the remote, honey?" love of marriage. Nor the warm, abiding friendship/love of old age. Nor even the intense, passionate love of the wedding night. I'm talking about the sort of love that makes you crazy, that fills up your heart and mind to the point that there's no room left in either for anything else; the kind of love you only experience once in your life. In eighth grade.

I don't know if girls go through this the same way boys do. In truth, I don't know much about girls and any guy who thinks he does is kidding himself.

But guys, myself included, fall madly, blindly in love, at least once; some in seventh grade, some not until ninth ... but most in eighth.

Maybe that's when guys begin to realize its possible girls don't have cooties, after all. That they can be ... what? ... pleasant? Nice? Sweet? And, dare I say it? They can be ... girlfriends. Yes, that's the word. Not one you want to hear your best friend utter as you sit around drinking Cokes after a pickup game of softball. Because, once said, it can never be unsaid.

Once said, everything changes. Once girls enter the picture, conversation no longer revolves around Spiderman and first basemen, jack knives and chasing ants with a magnifying glass. Once the "G" word enters your vocabulary, a new phase of life begins and the old is forever lost, a dim memory of simpler times.

Eighth-grade love has been on my mind the past couple days because of a note I found while raking leaves in the front yard. Why I bothered to pick up a crumpled, soggy piece of paper, I couldn't tell you, but I did.

On it was written a note from an unnamed boy to a girl named Jennifer. Judging by the handwriting, the note's love-struck author was, I'd guess, an eighth-grader.

Our young Romeo begins his missive cautiously but thoughtfully, with "Dear Jennifer." See, already he has managed to slip the word "Dear" in there, though in a non-committal manner, just in case Jennifer rebukes his advances.

He then tosses out a little small talk: "Hello!" he writes. "What's up? Not much here."

Whew! OK, the ice is broken. Time to move ahead to the mushy stuff: "Just sitting in class thinking about you." He might be thinking Jennifer's a geek; so far, our author can back out safely if he really has to.

"Sorry to bother you again, but it's important." Uh-oh, he's edging up to it now: "I need to know if you like me or not. Because I really like you a lot."

Too late. The words are out there now. Still, if things go really bad, our young Lothario can claim he was setting Jennifer up for some elaborate, and preferably cruel, joke.

But he goes on: "I think about you all the time. I would really like to be your boyfriend."

That's it, he's committed. I've seen marriages based on less devotion. Been in a couple, in fact.

Still, our hero continues: "Will you think about what I just said? Maybe we can talk after school today." He's laid it on the line now. His fate, his self-esteem, his very essence, has been placed trustingly in Jennifer's as-yet-unheld hands.

Young Romeo wraps up his thoughts with a tender "Cya later. With love," - and here you have to really admire his daring - "Your undercover lover!"

In a postscript, he sums up his feelings with a simple "Will you be my girlfriend?" followed by the obligatory check boxes indicating either YES or NO.

Neither was checked. So what happened, I wonder. Did Jennifer get the letter and simply toss it, along with Romeo's feelings? Did Romeo chicken out and throw the letter away without delivering it? Did Jennifer come out of school with some other guy carrying her books?

Or - and this is what I prefer to believe - did Jennifer return the letter personally, along with a long note declaring her own undying love?

While our young author's note may not have transcended the poetic lyricism of "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Jennifer the sun," it still contained more honest, heartfelt emotion than I've seen in a while.

And it helped me remember that time in my own life, before mortgages and parent-teacher conferences, when love had free reign and every thought and action was a blind, terrifying leap of faith into a great, dark unknown.

Be kind, Jennifer. Be kind.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or hints on romancing the ladies, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.