He’s got his back to the class, his shirt tightening as he strains to wipe the last of the elaborate equation off the whiteboard, all while he explains something to do with velocity, viscosity and steel balls. But all I can see is the curve of his jaw, the way his upper lip curves into a half-smile of satisfaction when the equation is solved, the mismatching dimples on his cheek, the way his eyes are brighter than my future...

"Ilona?"
I snap back to attention, and subtly wipe the drool from my chin.
"Did you hear the question?" Jesus, he’s even more gorgeous when he’s stern.

I go for the pitiable idiot card — he’s used to me not having a clue about forces acting on insignificant objects. "Sorry, sir, I’m just a bit confused by what we’re doing."

"You don’t know the answer to whether or not you’ve got your textbook?"
Shit. I turn beetroot red, panic, and display my textbook as if I’m a child showing their parent a star of the week certificate. He rolls his eyes, and carries on.

It was Year 10, I was a teenage girl coming to terms with my sexuality in an environment that didn’t really have the space for it, and he was definitely the love of my life. Never mind that he had a wife he referred to as ‘my better half’ and two young children so cute they melted your eyeballs.

"I would never have dreamed of talking about what I wanted someone I actually fancied to do to me"

Schoolgirl crushes are a stereotype that features in everything from soaps, to pornos, to films, and it’s not too hard to see why — I was reduced to an apathetic (but hilarious) mess. When it’s dramatised, however, the storyline usually has two inevitable consequences: either the teacher succumbs to the advances of the pupil, or the pupil makes a false allegation of assault. Now, although neither of these are unheard of in reality (with false allegations increasing steadily since the Children Act was introduced in 1989), incidents are pretty rare.

But is it so normal to look at a teacher, someone in a position of care and responsible for your emotional and intellectual well-being, in a romantic or sexualised way? Can we really blame it on boredom and teenage hormones, or is there a more serious issue at play?

Looking back, the crushes themselves were harmless, and boredom played a big part in them. The monotony of school, university and even the workplace means that it’s common to welcome anything that might make the days more exciting, including ‘falling for’ someone you shouldn’t. I hated science, but I liked having something to look forward to about it.

And of course teenage hormones played the biggest role; the girls were all getting acne, having periods and growing lumps in new places, while the boys were all getting acne, starting to sound different, and tripling in height. It was a weird time.

But I do wonder why the stereotype is a schoolgirl crush. I’m not saying for a second that  boys didn’t experience crushes the same way we did; but unlike the boys in my class, not many of us spent our lunch breaks talking about how many times we’d got ourselves off over the weekend or how they were nearly caught by their mum looking at tits on the internet.

The sad truth is that most of the sex education I got came from the boys around me rather than the school (boys are to thank for introducing me to words like ‘wank’, ‘clit’, and ‘anal’ and delightful phrases like ‘if the river runs red, go up the dirt track instead’, which confused me for weeks). School, whether deliberately or not, taught us that boys ejaculated, that boys needed sexual relief, that boys watched porn. They taught girls how to avoid getting pregnant, and the science of our monthlies.

This begs several questions: were the girls using the crushes they had on teachers to start exploring, analysing and discussing their new-found sexuality? Did not watching porn mean girls unconsciously sought other outlets? And if we had been more comfortable talking about female sexual pleasure within school, our girl groups, and wider society, would we have needed the comedic angle provided by crushes on teachers to begin these conversations? I would never have dreamed of talking about what I wanted someone I actually fancied to do to me, but with someone so distant and fantastical, we found ourselves with an arena to use the same language boys used. The impossibility of the situation gave us a kind of freedom, expressed through inappropriate, comedic fantasy.

Unfortunately, I have the answer to none of these questions. Online platforms like OMGYes! are only just edging (if you’ll pardon the pun) into the previously neglected subject of female desire, so we’ll see what effect, if at all, this has on the schoolgirl crush.

But in the meantime, I’ll just keep doodling my future surname in scented gel pen, and waiting for the wedding I’ve planned to a T