What’s the deal about a first kiss anyway? It’s rarely what you expect it to be, yet somehow pop culture has built it into a sweet sentimental thing.
Songs are written about it, and movies attempt to capture that special time. They make you remember all the excitement of the unknowns: Eyes closed or open? Will I like it? Do I hold my breath? What if I mess up? What if he has stinky breath? What if he thinks I do?
In reality the real first kiss, not just the first one between two particular people, is fumbly and awkward. Although the first kiss between a particular couple can be, too.
What you don’t hear about is that really tender kiss with that third someone and no one iconizes the specialness of that really hot fifth kiss. Nope, it’s the first kiss that is sweet.
Though mine certainly wasn’t. I was in junior high. It was in a grocery store. It was abrupt, and I thought the kid was trying to eat my face. There was a hint of strawberry Starburst, but other than that, as far as first kisses go, mine wasn’t so sweet. That possible zombie encounter was my first and last kiss for a long, long time.
This comes to mind often now as I watch my boys grow up and girls start to appear around our house. The first time I saw a non-related girl at my house, I was taken by surprise. I peeked into the boy/man cave where my sons and their friends gather to play video games and watch TV, and among the seven or so messy heads was one adorned with flowers.
“There’s a girl out there,” I said to Ron with an alarmed voice—like I had just seen a spider.
We both looked again, stupidly as if she would disappear or something, or perhaps it was just a feminine boy. This time they all turned to look at us. She didn’t vanish; she just smiled shyly.
Increasingly, more and more flower-headed friends have been seen around our house. Even our puppy, Finn, gets visitors. A pretty neighborhood dog discovered Finn one day and licked his face as he cowered.
Since then I’ll occasionally hear a scratch at our screen door and it’ll be her, the neighbor dog, standing there peering inside as Finn peeks at her from behind the safety of my legs.
Guess, like me, he didn’t like his first kiss either.
My youngest boy’s first kiss was kind of sweet. It had all the innocence of one of those cute nostalgia movies about adolescence.
However, it took us by surprise, and we realized we had better turn up the parental monitoring a degree.
There are a lot of young kids in our neighborhood, and they like to run out into our backyard in what we call the Hundered-Acre Wood. Usually we watch from the kitchen as they play on the swing hanging from the eucalyptus tree or play tag or some other type of play that doesn’t involve lips. Then entered the streetwise kid who taught them about the game Truth or Dare.
From our viewpoint, they seemed to be talking under one of the trees. What was really happening was the kid was daring a much older girl—she was 8—to kiss my 5-year-old. Ron and I never saw it happen, and so I can only think—or hope—that it was one of those precious little pecks you see on greeting cards. We found out about it minutes later as the kids, minus the instigator who ran home, came marching into the house and directly past us down the hall. Sebastian was stubbornly saying “No,” and shaking his head while the littlest girl was following him near tears.
Ron went to shoo them out of the room, and what he heard next has made up the very grown-up fantasy of many a man.
That young, little, angry girl told him emphatically, “You kissed my sister so now you have to kiss me!”
Not knowing what to say, Ron told them, “There will be no kissing in this house,” and sent them all home.
Maybe he’ll look back at that day fondly. Maybe he won’t remember it, and that moment will be replaced with another one a little more or a little less special.
Sometimes it’s not the first kiss ever that is so special anyway. It’s the first kiss with someone special. The first kiss between Ron and me wasn’t so smooth. (Cue the retching and dramatically fake barfing from my kids). We had a perfect date. Witty banter. Lots of laughs and then it was time to drop me off.
In front of my apartment in his little green truck he leaned in as did I. I tilted my head, he tilted his. Eyes closed, we leaned forward and bumped noses. Hard. We tried again tilting the other way. I think the bump that time made my eyes water.
We finally managed a short, small kiss before parting ways, both of us thinking “Wow that was really bad.” Seventeen years later, obviously it really wasn’t.
Contributor Shelley Cone doesn’t mind an awkward first kiss.
This article appears in Oct 2-9, 2014.