THAT FIRST KISS

Do you remember your first kiss? Mine involved a game of chase on the playground that ended with a ragtag group of third grade boys pinning me against the monkey bars while a real live third grade monkey planted one on me while my face was thrashing all around. I suppose it landed somewhere in the vicinity of my lips, so I consider it my first kiss. Not stellar, insofar as kisses go, and since I didn't participate, unless you consider all that head jerking participating, it was rather one-sided.

In junior high school, I discovered the romance novel. The fact that the plot lines were more or less the same was reassuring to a young girl. The heroine was always a virgin with zero experience (check) and her circumstances were always less than wonderful (check) and she started out with no prospects in sight (check) but once she met her guy her story might have been complicated but all of her "firsts" were awesome. Even that first fight knocked it out of the park. How great was that?


Every summer my church Youth Group went to an amusement park. We alternated between Cedar Point and Kings Island. I think this was the year we went to Kings Island. All in all, Cedar Point was the better park for the roller coaster buff, but Kings Island does have The Beast and that is a very fine coaster. Anyway, none of the boys at my high school were kiss-worthy in my book OR if they were kiss-worthy, they weren't interested in kissing me. Life is just mean like that.

Anyway, I happened to meet up with a boy at Kings Island. I know that you can already see where this is going. He was nice. He was cute. We talked. We walked. We rode the rides. And then in a private moment of madness I let him kiss me. Full on french kissing for the first time. If you're wondering what I was thinking it was something like this, "Oh my God. What is he doing with his tongue? Is this kissing or invasion? His tongue is everywhere. It is one big piece of meat. Get it out. Out. Out. Out. Is he poking? Licking? Chewing? What is this? This is terrible. When will this be over?????????"


As I recall, I made a hasty departure after that because I was afraid that he might try to do it again and I couldn't take anymore french kissing. What were the french thinking? The duration of my stay at the park that day was now about avoiding the Mad Kisser. Eeeks. Unfortunately, I couldn't share this story with any of my fellow youth groupers because maybe I was the bad kisser. I had no basis for comparison. So, it was a silent game of duck and evade.


As soon as we piled into the van to head home I snapped the walkman on and hoped to slip out of my thoughts and into the music so that I could turn off the voices that were talking a little too loudly for my personal comfort. It was not to be. Okay. Worst case scenario: He was a really good french kisser and I will just have to learn to like it. Sort of like broccoli. I was really having a problem with worst case scenario because I really wanted to brush my teeth, tongue and gums for about ten minutes and follow it up with mouthwash and I don't like mouthwash. Moving on to a better case scenario: Maybe he didn't know what he was doing either. That made me feel mildly better. Moving on again. Best case scenario: When have I ever done anything at my best on my first try? Now that had my attention. My first try riding my bike? Disaster. First time making my bed? Crying fit. First time on skates? Skinned knees. Jumping rope? More boo boos. Now we were on a roll. I finally found a scenario I could live with, a Walkman to pass the rest of the time, and good old fashioned toothpaste to erase a bad taste out of my mouth when I got home.