Happy Valentine's Day

What was your first kiss like?

I was fourteen years old, in the 8th grade, and suffering from the pains of adolescent hormones and insecurity-- not aided by the terrible frizzy perm from the JC Penney beauty salon. I was also half way through dating the entire tenor section of the choir. My current tenor lived not far from me and we walked home together after choir practice three times a week. Usually we walked with another member of the choir (and my subsequent boyfriend-- a baritone, breaking my tenor streak), but that day-- Valentine's Day-- Greg somehow manuevered it so that we were alone.

It was snowing and cold. Halfway home, we had to cross through a spit of land that was actually part of a park, so it was tree-lined and the path was seldom cleared of snow and ice. He stopped among the trees and handed me a little wrapped box. I opened it and found a little silver heart necklace. I was so excited-- no boy had ever given me a gift before! And it was jewelry! Undoubtedly cheap and probably would end up turning my neck green, but it was jewelry! Dear Lord, a fourteen year old heart is already drowning in melodramatic nonsense, even a level-headed fourteen year old, as I was.

While I was still standing there in a stated of pleased shock, he leaned in and gave me the world's quickest peck on the lips. My God, he kissed me! I must not be completely ugly!-- that's pretty much how it went.

Of course, this little burst of self-confidence completely backfired on poor Greg. I dumped him maybe a month later (although a month is a long time for a junior high school romance) for the baritone who sometimes walked home with us. It kind of cracks me up that I had this firmly rooted idea that I was so hideous that no one could possibly love me, when, looking back, I can see that I was pretty heartlessly working my way through a phalanx of suitors. I thought I had lame experiences, but my first kiss was like something out of a highly sanitized Disney sitcom. What things are happening to me now, I wonder, that I don't appreciate the way that I should?