Kiss and Tell

I now have 3 out of 4 plane tickets purchased for my trip to California this summer. Yay! I still feel like something is sneaking up on me...

Those of you missing my book reviews, you should join goodreads and be my friend. Then you will get way more booky goodness than you ever wanted. Same username as here.

I thought I would try writing about something a little different than my usual life updates, so the rest of this blog entry is dedicated to My First Kiss.

When I was in middle school, I was what you would call a dork. Not a nerd, or a geek. I was not super smart (not stupid either) or specialized in my loserness. Everything about me was wrong: bad clothes, bad hair, bad makeup. You can be nice and say that everyone was like that, but really at my school it was just me and maybe a couple of other kids. I think everyone else got lessons and better shopping options. I only had one friend at school, lets call her Cindy. There were a couple of other girls in our group, but it didn't take much for them to join the teasing hoards of kids that made my life miserable.

I was also left alone after school every day with my younger siblings. At first this was so my mom could sleep, so she was actually in the house. Later, I became The Babysitter (from Hell if you ask my sister and brother), when my mom went back to work for my grandfather. I came home first, then the sibs trailed in an hour or so later when their bus dropped them off from elementry. Cindy would often come home with me because her dad worked later and she liked the snacks at my house better.

One of the days when Cindy came over, she let me know that her boyfriend was coming over, too. I don't think she and this boy Steve had even been going out the day before, but suddenly he was her boyfriend. I knew my parents would freak if they knew a boy was in the house, but I didn't want her to get mad at me, so I said ok. Then she dropped the bomb, he was bringing a friend for me. Greg thought I was cute. What?! I didn't even know who Greg was!

Steve and Greg showed up on their bikes about 10 minutes after we got to my house. Greg was a short, skinny boy with braces, sandy brown hair and lots of freckles. He was cute in a dorky sort of way, and since I was a dork, and shy and he was nice to me, I decided I liked him, too.

At first we just hung around together, watching tv and eating snacks. Eventually he held my hand, which was pretty ballsy of a seventh grade boy. Then I heard the pounding of feet on the floor upstairs, my brother and sister were home! I had totally forgotten about them, which led to a dilema. I knew they would tell mom that I had a boy in the house and I would get in huge trouble. If I had been prepared when they got home, I could have distracted them, kept them upstairs, then rejoined my friends in the basement after the kids eyes were glazed with the reflections of cartoons. Because I wasn't waiting for them up there, they were already looking for me and probably on their way to the basement. I jumped up and ran up the stairs, looking slightly guilty as I sprang out of the basement door and tried to persuade them to go back into the kitchen. They instantly knew that something was up and tried to go past me into the basement. Finally I had to strong arm them away from the door.

After that it was hard to get away, but finally I made it back downstairs. Cindy and Steve were groping on the couch. Greg grabbed my hand and drew me into the guest bedroom. I was totally flustered and nervous. I had never kissed a boy before but I did know you were supposed to open your mouth and stick your tongue in theirs. I wondered what the braces would feel like, if they would be weird. Then he pulled me close and kissed me. His braces did feel weird, like having silverware in your mouth, cold and smooth. He darted his tongue in and I felt better, because I could tell that he didn't really know what he was doing either. We did this a couple more times, but then it was time for the boys to leave. We took them around the back of my house to the front yard and they rode away.

At some point my brother and sister must have seen them because later my mom knew there had been a boy over and I got grounded. I think we "went out" for a couple weeks at school, holding hands and pecking each other on the cheek until we broke up. I don't remember what over, but I was grounded the whole time, so maybe he was just tired of a girlfriend he could only hang out with at school.