by Ben Kassoy

The issue could be moral: she’s your best friend’s sister. Or legal: She is 17 and hasno business posting those beach pics on Instagram. Or just logistical: She’s apparently had a boyfriend for, like, a decade, even though you’ve never seen this dude because he lives in Italy.

1. The childhood crush: Recess spent hugging and hand-holding inevitably ended in heartbreak or humiliation when she bashfully rebuffed your French kiss advances and/or moved to an obscure state in a different time zone.

2. The celeb crush: Maybe their faces didn’t cover our lunch boxes and notebooks like they did for so many girls, but guys’ famous fantasies were just as intense. They started young (Cameron Diaz in The Mask) and went through phases (Carmen Electra), as some changed with every SI Swimsuit Edition (Marisa Miller) or Bondmovie (Halle Berry), while others remained timeless. Salma Hayek will always be plastered on my proverbial locker.

3. The work crush: You never wanted to admit your thing for your coworker until that happy hour where after, like, a drink and a half, it becomes ragingly apparent. You don’t know what it is about that pantsuit, but someone better call HR: Things are about to get seriously unprofessional.

4. The missed connection crush: The street, the grocery store, and the coffee shop are ripe for narrowly missing a life of utter bliss with the girl you’re only left to describe by a single striking feature, like a nose ring.

Maybe you make eye contact. Maybe she has no idea you exist. Regardless, you mentally fumble for an excuse to approach but freeze, hopelessly paralyzed, as she lifts her bag from the carousel, exits the sliding door, and hails a cab.

5. The performer crush: Any woman on a literal stage is also elevated on a figurative pedestal. She’s some intoxicating cocktail of talented, charismatic, and completely unattainable, glistening under the lights, as the rest of the performance fades out of focus.

At some point you realize you haven’t actually listened to a single song, because you’ve been lasering her with eye contact, hoping she’ll reciprocate. Too bad you’re sitting in the dark, 22 rows back.

6. The you-think-you’re-special crush: She’s a bartender, masseuse, or flight attendant, someone literally paid to give you—and countless others—the same genuine-seeming flirty attention.

Still, you convince yourself that you’ve forged a truly special connection that transcends your status as drunk college sophomore and hers as bikini-clad Carnival Cruise poolside fun-and-games director. Better keep tipping.

7. The older crush: The moms, older sisters, camp counselors, teachers, tutors, and anyone other female whose air of experience, sophistication, and sheer disinterest in you piques feelings of despair coupled with tingly exhilaration. Then again, for every Stacy’s mom, there’s probably some Mrs. Robinson or Wendy Peffercorn. A boy can dream, can’t he?

8. The forbidden crush: The issue could be moral: she’s your best friend’s sister. Or legal: She is 17 and has no business posting those beach pics on Instagram. Or just logistical: She’s apparently had a boyfriend for, like, a decade, even though you’ve never seen this dude because he lives in Italy. You’ll never make a real move, but as they say, just because you’re not in the game doesn’t mean you can’t read the box score.

9. The vacation crush: Maybe she’s a local, who makes you consider staying in that foreign land forever. Or maybe she’s a fellow traveler, who makes you determined to make it work after the trip. At least that’s what Birthright hopes.

10. The dangerous crush: Tattooed, pierced, or encountered in a place of questionable morals and iffy health-code standards, she’s the real-life version of Britney Spears in the “Toxic” video. The kind of girl who’d bang you then kill you.

Mine was a Chilean runaway with an inexplicable French accent and a definite record. She was like Amy Winehouse with slightly less drugs and slightly more eye makeup. I would’ve killed to have been killed by her.

11. The fictional crush: Celeb crush to fictional crush is Natalie Portman to Natalie Portman’s character inGarden State. This includes book characters (Hermione), animated characters (Jasmine), and even nonhuman animated characters (Nala). Don’t even get us started on video games.

12. The “perfect” crush: As you check the boxes in your mental rubric, she’s everything you imagined. What to do first: Call your mom and tell her you’ve found the one? Get down on a knee and propose?

Oh, right: her name. First you could learn her name.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.