Ewww..Kissing is Gross...

Last week I participated in Mama Kat's writing workshop and wrote about 22 things I have done in my lifetime. I got a few comments and emails about #4 & #5 (as they went together), so I am going to elaborate on them. Here they are below, just in case you missed them.

#4. Summer before 7th grade had my first real kiss. Wasn't expecting it, knee jerk reaction later & #5.  I punched the boy in the face. (How you like those apples?! Two covered in one shot) I should probably explain this a little bit. I thought it was going to be a sweet kiss not a kiss I had seen the teenagers doing in the hallways. I really didn't mean to punch him. It truly was a grossed out/knee jerk reaction. Needless to say...we were no longer girlfriend & boyfriend.

Let me take you back to the warm summer of 1984. The surf look was all the rage. You could always find me in a tank top, board shorts and pink Converse high tops. I was "going out" with this boy I will call "Perv". We had a mutual close friend that I will call "Set up". The three of us always hung out together. We walked & rode our bikes all over the neighborhood (remember we are back in 1984...you could do those things way back then). We played on the fields at the school, we watched movies, we went to the neighborhood snowball stand (daily) and we also tended to talk Set up's mom into taking us to McDonald's on Friday afternoons for dinner.

So, what I thought would be a regular Friday afternoon with a plain cheeseburger, fries and a Coke turned into an afternoon that will be forever stuck in my memory.

After eating, Set up's mom told us we could go get some energy out on the playground outside while the parents finished eating. Yes, it was for little ones but no little ones were using it so we took advantage of it...we were kids, ya know! We were running around playing tag when Perv ran over to Set up and started whispering. I thought they were working a strategy to catch me. Little did I know that Perv was working with Set up to corner and trap me for another reason.

I crawled inside the two gigantic cheeseburgers connected at the side to form a cave thinking that I would have a quick escape to the other side. Well, I was wrong...Set up was blocking the exit and wouldn't let me out while laughing hysterically. At the other end, Perv had followed me in.

I could feel my palms starting to sweat, my face start to turn red and my heart racing. I knew the moment of my first kiss was upon me. I was ready too! Perv was one of the cutest boys in our grade and he was so much to hang out with. As Perv crawled up closer to me, my belly began to do flips and I closed my eyes to stop the light headed feeling that had suddenly come over me. Any second I was going to feel his cute, pink lips on mine for a sweet kiss.

Only, it didn't happen that way. Perv came up to me alright but it wasn't his cute, pink lips I felt...it was his chicken nugget tasting tongue!!! I was so grossed out that I jerked my face away from his and punch him square in the cheek. It was a total knee-jerk reaction. I had no idea that I had even done it until he started to cry and call me a prude. (You guessed it...he had an older brother whom not only told him to shove his tongue down my throat but told him I was a prude if I didn't let him. Lovely, right?!)

That was obviously the end of our relationship and my first "real" kiss, didn't come until I was ready...a few years later.

So, the next time you hear someone say, "Ewww...kissing is gross!!", think of me and know that they are right. Until you are ready...kissing is gross!!