(Written in February 2009)

There’s always a lot of pressure about your first kiss. Kissing is everywhere. You see it on TV, in the movies, in restaurants…you even see your PARENTS do it. So why is it that your first kiss is such a milestone? I think it’s the suspense of the unknown on a personal level. How does one really figure out HOW to kiss someone? I don’t mean kissing your parents or your grandmother on the cheek but a true boy-girl kiss for the first time.

The kiss in the old movies was simple. You went in, you put your lips together and then you held it there. No tongue. No open mouth. The only things that moved were the arms that were passionately wrapped around the other person. By the time they separated they were so out of breath that they could hardly speak. After a kiss like that they usually got married.

No wonder we were all confused when it came to the first kiss. I was always too petrified to play “Spin the Bottle” or “7 minutes in Heaven” because I had no idea what to do. What if the bottle landed on me? What if everyone was watching me as I got my first kiss? What a nightmare. Plus my dad with his bad timing ESP would have come to pick me up at the party at THAT exact moment. What if the bottle landed on someone that I really didn’t want to kiss? What if my first kiss was with the one kid who picked on me constantly or farted in class or blew snot rockets out of his nose? Did I really want that to be my memory?

I always dreamed of my first kiss. I prayed it would be with David, the older brother of my best friend Ginny. Ginny’s brother was two years older than I was and he was like an Adonis to me. He looked like he had been sculpted by an Angel. He had beautiful olive skin, dark hair, chocolate brown eyes and a slightly crooked grin that made me melt. I turned into a blubbering idiot whenever he was around. I couldn’t speak clearly so he probably thought I was a foreign exchange student and English was my second language. Ginny and I might not have been such good friends had it not been for her hot brother. Every time she wanted to come up and play at my house, I always came up with a reason that we should play at her house instead.

It was so painfully obvious that I had a huge crush on him, but of course David looked at me as just the friend of his pesky little sister and therefore avoided me like the plague. It could have also been that I had braces, I wasn’t allowed to wear make up, I had made a bad attempt at a Farrah Fawcett hairdo, and a chest flatter than a 10 year old boy.

I dreamed he would one day look at me like I was Cheryl Tieges and would immediately fall head over heels in love with me. He would take me in his arms and give me the kiss of a lifetime. I practiced writing “Mrs. David Sparkman” on my notebook paper over and over. I wanted to be the Juliet to his Romeo. Yeah, it didn’t happen.

My first kiss ended up being with a guy named Walter, which Matthew thinks is hysterical. He had asked me to the 1984 football banquet and drove up to my house in his bitchin’ black Camaro. My dad gave him “the eye” when they shook hands and told him to have me home by 10:30. The banquet was pretty dull so the highlight of the whole night was when he kissed me at the door when he took me home. It was one of those kisses where you stand there awkwardly shifting your weight from left foot to right foot and then repeating.

“So, I guess I will see you on Monday at school?”

“Yeah. Thanks for asking me to the banquet.”

“No problem. Sorry it was kind of boring.”

There is a long pause of silence with the exception of the noise coming from the foot shifting. Then the conversation repeats.

“Well, okay. Guess I will see you Monday at school. “

“Yeah, thanks again for asking me to the banquet.”

He leaned over and gave me a quick peck. No passionate arms around the neck kind of kiss. Just a simple kiss on the lips, which was a good thing because my parents were probably upstairs watching out the window. There is not a chance that they missed that Camaro pulling into the driveway. The vroom, vroom of the engine was so loud that it more than likely rated on the sizometer measuring earthquakes. In the end, my first kiss was nothing too spectacular but at least it was over.

Which leads me to Matthew’s first kiss. We have always been able to talk about everything so when he came home from the 7th grade dance with a huge grin on his face, I knew it.

“How was the dance?”

“Pretty good.”

“Who did you see? Did you dance with anyone?”

(Pause and grin)

“I danced with Erin.”

(Another pause and grin.)

“So what happened?”

“Well, I kissed her.”

This time I paused with a deer in the headlights look. I started praying for one of those 1940’s kisses.

“Oh. So what did you think?”

“Well. We were dancing and she had her arms around me and I had my arms around her. I leaned in and got her chin.”

I couldn’t help but be elated inside. He had no idea what he was doing.

“So did you try again?”

“Yeah. It worked this time but I don’t see what the big deal is. I’m going upstairs to play x-box with the guys.  I can’t wait to tell them.”

I have come to the conclusion that every girl wants a Romeo & Juliet moment for their first kiss. Every boy just wants a kiss so they can brag to their friends.