'Weird Al' Yankovic Reveals Twitter Helped Him Reconnect with Childhood Crush in Sweet Viral Story
'Weird Al' Yankovic is making us all swoon this holiday season!
On Tuesday, the parody master, 61, revealed to his fans that he recently reconnected with his childhood crush — and that she had kept a drawing he made her many years ago.
"I was 12 years old in the 9th grade — younger than my classmates, and (as you may possibly be able to imagine) pretty awkward, shy and nerdy," Yankovic recalled in a post on Facebook. "And I had a crush on Patrice Y., the girl who sat directly in front of me in math class (because the seats were all arranged in alphabetical order for some arbitrary reason)."
"Of course, Patrice would never in a million years have suspected that I had a crush on her, because like I explained… painfully shy. But one day I decided I would make my big move - I decided to draw a picture of her and present her with it," he wrote.
Weird Al Yankovic just won 2020. pic.twitter.com/dvcxbf8Rr5
— Tim Fullerton (@TimFullerton) December 23, 2020
However, Yankovic wanted to be sly with his gift, and "didn’t want to give her the impression that I LIKED her or anything." So he decided to draw pictures of every single person in his class too, "just to throw her off the scent."
"Full disclosure, I tried to make Patrice’s picture a little bit better than everyone else’s, just to be subtle about my feelings," he wrote. "Anyway, everybody seemed to like their drawings, and, as you may have predicted, my love life remained completely dormant for the next several years."
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
"Okay, fast forward nearly half a century later… I’m checking my Twitter feed and I see some woman on there talking about how she used to sit in front of me during 9th grade math class," Yankovic continued. "Being slightly less shy at my current advanced age, I decided to follow up on this: I DM’ed her and asked if by any chance her name was Patrice."
"Turns out, it was. It was her — my 9th grade crush," he said.
RELATED: Weird Al Yankovic Reveals the One Musician Who Always Said No – Prince
The singer then followed up and asked her if she remembered the time he drew pictures of everyone in the class. She replied by sending him a photo of the drawing he made for her.
"She had saved it all these years," he wrote. "I just felt like telling this story because, well… 2020 was arguably a pretty sucky year overall, but there were some real moments of joy sprinkled in here and there — and for me, this was definitely one of them."
Others on social media seemed to agree, as a tweet declaring that Yankovic "just won 2020" was liked more than 330,000 times.
"Love this story!" one user wrote. "Makes my heart swell."
