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Our Valentine’s Day gift: Milk snorting, bank ‘robbing’ and other wacky things we do for love

(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)

Love — or the chance to find it — can make us do crazy things.

We fake a fall, pretend to like a new band, dare to dress as a leprechaun or agree to let the object of our affection inflict pain — like an eraser burn that leaves a scar — on us.

Yes, we’re all fools for love.

For Valentine’s Day, we asked Salt Lake Tribune readers to tell us the funniest, most embarrassing thing they ever did to impress a crush. Here, edited for space and clarity, are their answers:

Falling for you

In middle school, I was walking in front of my crush to our science class and I thought, “Oh man, if I tripped and fell, he’d come help me and we’d fall in love! Like a movie!” I “fell.” He stepped over my strewn books and did not even stutter in his conversation. — Kate Wilson, Spanish Fork

Band aid for my heart

In college, I once pretended to love the same band that my crush did. Whenever he’d come into the library, I’d pull up YouTube and start playing one of their songs. After a while of keeping it up, he said it was weird that I only listened to that one band all the time. — Kate Myler, Logan

Unlucky leprechaun

Ninth grade. First real, hard crush. Dressed like a leprechaun for St. Patrick’s Day and carried around a “pot of gold” (Rolo candies). It did not impress said crush (at least not in a good way). I later asked crush to “go with me” and offered a cheap ring. It was a hard no. — Rory McFarlan, Seattle

Can’t erase your love

When I was a freshman in high school, my crush — who sat next to me in algebra — talked me into her giving me an eraser burn. I tried to act tough as she rubbed a pencil eraser to the nub, and I pretended it didn’t hurt. It bled for two days straight. Still have the scar. — Blair Einfeldt, Cedar City native, now in Lexington, Ky.

Sweet treat cheat

I bought a plate of cookies from the store, warmed them up in the microwave and said they were fresh-baked when I brought them to dinner. We’re going on 29 years married now. — Jared Eborn, Murray

Fact checker

In college, my BFF’s crush loved random facts. We memorized a bunch of items from the “Guinness Book of World Records” and scripted a dialogue where we could seamlessly mention said records. It worked. They will have been married 25 years this August. — Courtney Dana, San Diego

Getting tipsy

In second grade, someone tipped over backward in the chair and everyone laughed. So it became my daily routine to try to get my crush to laugh at me duplicating the act. I soon got others to join me. We had a scheduled time so it would be synchronized. — Mike Andersen, Springville

A nose for beauty

In first grade, my mom came to school to have lunch with me. This kid in my class thought my mom was so pretty, and he wanted to impress her by snorting chocolate milk up his nose. He ended up in the nurse’s office with blood and milk coming out of his nose. — Diedre Luna, Cincinnati

Slap-happy

I slapped a guy I had a huge crush on in the face — hard. Initially, I fake-slapped him because he said something dumb. Then he said, “No, really, slap me.” So I did. — Christyna Gardner, Logan

Singing off-key

In high school, my crush in choir was going to sing “Bring Him Home” in our spring show. I painstakingly practiced the piano accompaniment for weeks so I could offer to help him practice. My arrangement was in the wrong key. Later plot twist: He was gay. — Emily Johnson, Provo

Kid pro quo

When I was in second grade, I was the girl (with a bike) that would tell the boy (without a bike) I’d give him a ride home from school on my banana seat bike — if he gave me a kiss when we got to his house. — Teri Carroll, Glendale, Ariz.

Room service

He was a friend for a long time, so I left a bag of tennis balls on his dorm room bed with a note that said, “I finally got the balls to tell you I have a crush on you.” — Sarita Venkatapathy Naidu, South Jordan

Just for kicks

My crush loved kickball, so I had a friend teach me after class one day, then played the next day. I broke my hand three minutes in. — Tristan McAfee, Springville

A slippery slope

In fourth grade, I tried to impress my crush by going down an icy slide standing up. I broke my tailbone and spent the rest of the day bent in half with an ice pack on my butt. Needless to say, I haven’t talked to him since. — Anna Brewer, Riverton

Soup for the soul

My friend asked me out and I told him I wasn’t interested even though I was. A week later, he got the flu, so I bought him cans of chicken noodle soup and Lysol wipes and doorbell-ditched them at his apartment. We’re engaged now. — Emily Harames, Willard

Lip service

I used to buy ChapStick as an excuse to go see my now wife who worked at Walgreens. I seriously ended up with at least 20, and now I always have ChapStick, usually in every room or car and in every situation I might need, because it became a part of me. Ha-ha. — Austin DeSpain, Bountiful

Sending a message

Went back through all the messages he’d ever sent me and treated them like historical documents, trying to determine if he liked me back. Then I ran into him on the way back from the printer with my stack of his messages in my hands. — Sasha Sorokin, Salt Lake City

Fan girl flop

In high school, at the first rehearsal for a musical, there was this beautiful boy wearing a Saosin shirt. So I went home and bought the band’s ENTIRE discography, learned everything I could about them over the weekend, and bought every Saosin shirt at Hot Topic. I actually fell in love with the band. Then I went to our next rehearsal and tried to talk to him about them, hoping to impress him with how big a fan I was. Turns out he was the fake fan and only bought the shirt because it looked cool. He’d never even listened to a single song. — Shanda Rasmussen, Logan

We’ve got chemistry

I once dropped a pickup line on my crush that went a little like this: “I like Legos. I know you like Legos, Why don’t we build a relationship together?” Mind you, I was a junior in high school and he was my chemistry lab partner. Later, I also pulled the line, “Hey, everyone says we’ve got amazing chemistry.” Looking back, I have never been more embarrassed. — Celeste Hompstead, Phoenix

Caffeine crush

I was super into a barista (she was tall and gorgeous) and I’d flirt with her a little every time I got my coffee. Then, one day, in my head, I was like, “I should ask her to write her number on my cup.” Apparently, I said it out loud. I turned bright red. My face was still pink 20 minutes later when I went to class and the teaching assistant asked, “Oh, did you run to class?” — Amelia Price, Logan native, now living in Oklahoma City

Gangster infatuation

While a student at BYU (in the mid-1980s), I bought a trench coat and fedora at Deseret Industries and a toy automatic rifle from who knows where. I wrote a clever note, dressed up in my Machine Gun Kelly outfit (hat low, of course) and walked into the bank where the guy I had started seeing worked as a teller. I marched straight to his window, toy rifle at the ready, and handed him the note asking him to do something or other with me. He declined and couldn’t get me out of that bank fast enough. It’s still a wonder I wasn’t arrested. Needless to say, he never asked me out again. — Lisa Torcasso Downing, Heath, Texas

The Bard bombs

During high school, I asked my crush out, and she said she was busy that night. She had an online class she had to finish to graduate. I imagined this girl stressing over this class and agonizing over the possibility of not walking with her friends. I decided something must be done. After my evening shift at Peter Piper Pizza, where young professionals are made, I went to the store and put together a care package. My cunning plan was to climb up the side of her house and leave the package on her balcony, which looked out on the street. This would provide for optimal romance without actually disturbing her study. With the Shakespearean confidence of a young man in love, I scaled the sidewall only to be interrupted halfway up by a deep and irritated voice shouting, “CAN I HELP YOU?” It was only then I realized how this might look to her father, who (justifyingly) assumed I was sneaking into one of his seven daughters’ rooms. I stammered through a response to his question, eventually getting out the words “care package” and the name of this crush. Here he cut me off. “You know she’s not here, right?” I stammered for a moment more and then, as an afterthought, he clarified, “Yeah, she left with some guy a couple hours ago.” So, I gave him the care package and it sat on her kitchen table, waiting for her to get back from her date. — Taylor Kerby, Phoenix

Sister act

At my high school, girls asking guys to prom was normal. As a sophomore, having just turned old enough to go out on dates and being friends with mostly juniors, I decided to ask a junior boy from my choir class. He was my BFF’s crush, but she was too chicken to ask him. This way we could double, and she would still get to hang out with him. I walked up to him after school and asked if he wanted to go to prom. He said, “Of course.” I told him I would call to make arrangements. We went and had fun. A month later, I found out from a friend that this boy had been flirting with my sister, a senior, about the time I asked him, and he thought I was asking for her, and I was going to “make arrangements” for them to go to prom together. I had no idea. Oops! — Roseanne Hendricks, Orem