shawn anderson must d*e

04 Mar, 2026

c. 2007, a classmate and I went on a picnic during which I confessed my unrequited crush on a boy named Shawn Anderson. I knew essentially nothing about him except that he was good-looking, cool in the late aughties thrifted sweater boy way, and very aloof. I was dying inside.

Shawn Anderson was always bumping into me at the worst possible moment.

I bravely attempt to say hi to him as we pass each other in the hallway and have a massive, open-mouthed sneezing attack. I'm eating with my friends in the cafeteria and look up from my plate & into his blue eyes right as a huge nacho falls back out of my mouth and into my lap.

Being subject to ongoing mortification and misfortune - my onlooking friends witnessing something terrible & terribly unlikely befall me for the N^th time and saying, "You weren't exaggerating, it really is that bad" - has become part of my self-image. It's horrible; but it's pretty funny, too. I liked the embarrassing stories at least as much as I liked the boy.

In the years after high school I gradually learned that I'd had a much lower opinion of my social status than any of my classmates did. At our "last day of high school" bonfire Shawn Anderson told me, in the tone of one defensively correcting a misconception, "You know, I always thought you were pretty cool." Before that moment I was certain he'd had no idea I existed except as a frizzy-haired, contraption-mouthed¹ nerd.

In response to my confession, my friend made me a mix CD entitled Shawn Anderson Must Die, neatly wrapped in a handwritten note encouraging me to hate boys more and stay true to myself.

Sometime in the two decades since that picnic, my baby blue CD case disappeared. It held a number of these precious mixes, burned onto blank CDs and labeled with sharpie, Shawn Anderson Must Die the iconic, lovelorn highschooler crown jewel; the loss still stings. And then, this past Saturday morning, prompted to enjoy pressing on this tender bruise by a mention of really good playlists, an epiphany occurred:

Isn't my junior year diary in a box in the back of my closet? Doesn't it have a pocket inside the front cover? Wouldn't I have wanted to hang onto this particular note? And didn't it include a detailed tracklist?

⁺✧₊⁺

fig. 01 a self-portrait taken january 30, 2008. at this point my braces were off and I was entering my "I wish I was an artsy indie girl" era, but all the yearning and weirdly-self-centered low self-esteem remained.
fig. 02 a reconstruction, now with two bonus tracks: songs I recall some guy playing on an acoustic guitar at the bonfire where Shawn Anderson told me he actually thought I was pretty cool.

#memoir #playlists