Girl recounts how she almost committed a crime trying to flirt with an 18yo in primary school. 5 years later, she sees him again: ‘WATTPAD STORY IRL’
Emily was creative.
Childhood crushes are usually harmless, unless you shoot your shot with stones. Emily Jade (@emiiyjade) recounted how her innocent attempt to flirt nearly resulted in a primary school casualty. It’s equal parts hilarious and embarrassing.
In a TikTok video with over 290,000 views, Emily recounts the chaotic aftermath of her unique flirting strategy when she was just eight years old. At that age, she could only come up with a plan involving a hoodie and a mountain of gravel.
Understandably, it did not end well. But the unexpected return of her crush years later was even more chaotic.
Emily’s desperate move to flirt was anything but harmless
Emily recounts that she had a crush on an 18-year-old school staff member when she was just eight years old. So, she spent months begging a friend to ask him out on her behalf. But she never followed through. So, Emily decided to take matters into her own hands.
Her method of choice? Filling the hood of the guy’s sweatshirt with a combination of large stones and small pebbles.
Her flirt-fail caused a classroom scene
The disaster struck when the staff member decided to put his hood up while walking through the school hall. The stones crashed to the floor with such a noise that a teacher immediately rushed over to investigate.
Unexpectedly, the guy pointed Emily out as the culprit. Fuming, the teacher stood over her and delivered a terrifying reprimand: “You could have killed him.” Being called out in front of her schoolmates, Emily started crying. Her flirting prank ended with her “scrabbling about on the floor,” picking up the stones in silence with her crush.
The crush returned as her secondary school teacher
Years later, Emily joined secondary school, expecting a new start like everyone. But soon, she realized that her new physics teacher was the exact same man from the primary school “homicide” attempt.
Although she was never assigned to his class, she spent years walking past him in the corridors. She admitted that she was terrified that he still looked at her as “the freak that tried to kill me.”
Making it even harder for her to forget him, the man even popped up in her mother’s social circle. Effectively, he cemented his status as a figure who was “haunting” her through her teens.
Why did Emily chose to flirt in such a lethal way?
Children often express affection through “play-aggression,” or acts like hair-pulling, poking, or in Emily’s case, hood-filling. This is because they lack the emotional maturity to communicate attraction directly.
While an eight-year-old may see a pile of stones as a fun, shared secret, it’s a potential head injury for an adult. But in all possibilities, Emily had no intention to hurt her crush. She might have just wanted to leave an impression on him. And arguably, she succeeded.
How to survive a run-in with a childhood embarrassment
If your crush from primary school suddenly reappears in your adult life, you don’t need to be embarrassed. If you must speak to them, treat the past incident with humor. Most adults realize that eight-year-olds are essentially chaotic agents.
Importantly, if they are now in a position of authority, like Emily’s physics teacher, keep all interactions formal. And you don’t need to swell on the past. People generally don’t hold grudges against children for accidental mischief. Chances are, they remember the event as a funny story rather than a murder attempt.
Like Emily, turning your most embarrassing moment into a viral “storytime” is the ultimate way to take the power back from the situation. So, you could try that, too.
TikTok users are comparing the chaos to a Wattpad story
The internet has been living for Emily’s craggy dating fail, with many relating to the unique “logic” of an eight-year-old. “That’s basically how penguins flirt,” one viewer noted, finding the “pebble gift” strategy surprisingly wholesome.
“It was his fault. He knew they were in his hood,” another joked, pointing out that the eighteen-year-old was a willing participant in the stunt. “A Wattpad story in real life,” a third added, referencing the classic “student-teacher” tension found in online fiction.
While Emily might have spent years avoiding the physics wing, she walked away with a story that proves primary school “love” is truly a dangerous game.
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