My childhood friend – let’s call him Tim because that’s his name – recently celebrated the 24^th anniversary of the day he gave one of his kidneys to his mother.  He honored the day with a quick note on Facebook: “Hopefully it keeps working like a champ!  Love you, Mom!”

Let’s flash back even further to when Tim and I – and, most importantly, a girl named Kristie –  were twelve years old.  It was the middle of winter in North Dakota so, naturally, Kristie and I decided to go for a walk.  Tim lived around the corner from me in a blue house with white shutters, and because Kristie, like, definitely did not have a crush on him, we determined the best route for our random, unplanned walk would take us coincidentally right by his house.

Tim was outside with one of our other classmates, which we knew because we could see them from my house.  We also knew Tim for sure had a crush on Kristie – which was proven by the fact that Tim picked up a handful of snow, packed it into a tight ball of ice, and threw it as hard as he could at Kristie.  As neither Tim nor our other classmate had a crush on me, I remained iceball-free.

Over the next year, Tim and Kristie stopped throwing iceballs at one another and started throwing them at other people.  The classmate, on the other hand, decided he probably did have a crush on me and did what any normal teenager in the 90s did to express their emotions: he made me a mix tape.

My husband, Kyle, also made me a mix tape when we were dating; it’s how I knew we were going to get married.  Kyle’s mix tape was actually a CD, and he made it with a six-disc changer because it was the early 2000s and Kyle was a popular guy with a need for efficient mix taping.  When we got engaged he made me another mix CD called “Mrs. Kosior Mix,” which is still about the most romantic CD title I’ve ever read in my life.

Back in the 90s, however, we didn’t have six-disc or even single-disc changers and so we made mix tapes in one of two ways.  One, we sat by the radio for hours and hours and hours with one finger hovered over the “Record” button and the other hand dialing the radio station to request the song we needed for the tape.  Two, we got a dual-tape boombox for our fifteenth birthday because, like Kyle, we were making a lot of mix tapes, the radio station was tied up with people calling in to dedicate songs to one another, and we now had a job that afforded us the opportunity to buy every Madonna cassette single Sam Goody had to offer.

While mix tapes were for deep, passionate love and/or our best friends and/or our dance team practices and/or fellow Madonna lovers, if we wanted to tell someone we were “chuck an iceball” into them, we would send them candy.  Twice a year, my high school sold candy: canes at Christmastime, lollipops for Valentine’s Day.  The giver would write their own name, the name of the recipient, and the recipient’s class at a certain period of the day with the understanding that the class would be interrupted mid-learning so that teachers and students alike knew that so-and-so liked so-and-so.  Like dedicating songs on the radio or hitting someone with a snowball, this public display of affection was important because what is love if not shared.

Similar to Tim’s mother, I am fortunate to have two sons who are excellent, really top-shelf, at expressing their love to me.  My nine-year-old regularly leaves me Post-it notes which read, “I love you so much Mommy and I am going to love you forever and I think about you all the time.”  On more than one occasion, my thirteen-year-old has mumbled, “Yeah, love you” when I drop him and his friend off at school, which is the middle school equivalent of giving me a kidney.

However, when it comes attracting a mate, my children have none of the luxuries afforded to me.  Mix tapes and CDs have been replaced by Spotify playlists and copyright infringement.  The only things being dedicated nowadays are benches at the park so that people can sit and listen to their Spotify playlists.  Disrupting the academic environment to deliver love candy sounds like a whole stack of legal issues.  Throwing iceballs at people is a hard no.

“How do you tell a girl that you like her?”  I asked Thirteen the other day.

“What do you mean?”  He asked, confused.

“If you have a crush on someone,” I said, “How does she know it?”

“What do you mean?” Thirteen’s friend repeated.  “You tell her.”

“Tell her how?”  I asked.  “Like, you post it on your Snap Story?”

They burst into laughter.

“What?”  The friend said.  “Why would you do that?  You just tell her.”

“You say, ‘I like you,’” Thirteen said.

“Like, with your voice?”  I asked.  They started laughing again.

“Yes, with your voice,” the friend said.  “What else would you use?”

They left the room, presumably to comfortably express their feelings of the opposite sex to their faces.  I looked at Kyle.

“I like you,” he said.  “Wanna go steady?”

“If you really liked me, you’d make me a mix tape,” I said, twirling my wedding ring.

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The photo above is of Mrs. and Mr. Kosior. Mrs. Kosior is smiling like that because she had just jammed an entire bread roll in her mouth.

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This week on North Dakota Today we talked about Jake and Alex Hellman (plus an awesome group of teenagers), my Nice People of the Week, as well a fun day for students to learn about water conservation. (Valley News Live)

The photo of Kyle and me above was taking at the YWCA Women of the Year Award Gala.  My friend Elizabeth was named one of the Women of the Year for her work to eliminate teenage suicide through her family’s 4-6-3 Foundation.  Learn more here. (4-6-3)

Five NDSU Football players are headed to the NFL. (Valley News Live)  Plus, Grey Zabel’s response, per the comments, is “the most North Dakota thing ever.” (Facebook)

In “could the Honor Flights get any more awesome” news, Jim Budeau’s 16-year-old grandson surprised his grandpa in Washington, D.C. (KFYR TV)

And, of course, here’s what the vets found when they returned. (KFYR TV)

There’s a new park in North Dakota. (KFYR TV)

In “making the best of a terrible situation” news, Trooper Jimmy Myers received the Distinguished Service Medal award for helping a woman during a homicide response. (Fargo Forum)

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