30DWC - Your first love and first kiss - eek!

Day 3: Your first love and first kiss; if separate, discuss both

Crikey! This is like sitting for an exam. Talk about feeling vulnerable. We're talking about things that happened a loooong time ago! Yesterday I wrote about my earliest memory and right now I'm thinking that perhaps I have real problems with my memory because I'm struggling to call up these distant memories too. Perhaps I should make something up! No, that wouldn't be fair...although, I am the author of this piece and that does afford me considerable power in terms of where the story goes.

What I do know is that I had a number of 'crushes' when I was in primary school and early high school, but I was far too self-conscious to let anyone know about them. At some point in my early high school years my friends discovered the unthinkable truth - that I'd never had a boyfriend. Yes, back in the 70s kids were in just as a big a hurry to 'grow up' as they are now. Not much has changed really although we like to say it has. Anyway, they decided I absolutely must have a boyfriend or my life wouldn't be worth living. So they paired me up with one of the 'unattached' boys in our friendship group and he agreed to be my beau (of sorts). I think we may have held hands rather awkwardly but I don't think we ever kissed. And he wasn't one of my crushes! The romance lasted only a day or two as I recall. Between us I think we nearly died of embarrassment but such is the weight of peer pressure. It was like a social experiment - but we didn't produce the right result!

I met my first love at a dance in the town hall a couple of years later. There was a band and the music was loud and I was gyrating with the best of them quite probably wearing my favourite red platform shoes and a bright yellow full length cheesecloth coat thing with mirrors all over the front -and yes, it was embroidered too (forgive me for this frightening image). Well, I'm not going to give names here because gosh, with Facebook and Twitter next thing he'd be reading this and then I probably would die of embarrassment and we couldn't have that because there are still 27 days to go in this challenge. So yes, he gyrated up to me and we gyrated together for most of the night. I'm pretty sure we would have headed outside for at least several cigarettes over the course of the evening, and exchanged a few getting to know you bits of data. My nan used to give me smokes back then - ah, they were the days! Oh, dear!

 A few of us used to tidy and sweep the hall afterwards in exchange for getting into the dances free of charge, so he hung about and helped push the brooms up and down the hall. Anyway, to cut a short story even shorter, I'm pretty sure I got kissed that night. I imagine it was pretty exciting but I also imagine I was too charged on cheap and nasty Brandivino to really notice. I'm lying - it was fabulously exciting! Brandivino ($1.80 a bottle) was all most of us could afford unless we managed to pilfer something fancier from our parents' home bars - it was the 70s and they were very popular in those days. That's how things were back then. A tobacco and Brandivino flavoured smooch after a lot of suggestive gyrating to pounding rock music - then into the fogies (parents) car for a reluctant premature end to an otherwise promising night. The liaison formed that night did endure, on and off, for a number of years, so it was a kiss well spent I suppose. I learned a lot from that first real venture into 'relationship'. It was the 70s!! What else can I say?

Well, I think that's done. How sad that it was not more romantic, more beguiling, more mysterious or more exciting. Life is raw sometimes. Not the way they paint it in magazine stories and fairy tales. It can be impulsive and impetuous and ugly. Those awkward teenage years trying to work out who the hell we are and where the hell we fit into this crazy world we've landed in - they can feel like - hell. At least I've gained from them some understanding and compassion for young people today. You know, whoever coined the phrase that teenage years are the best years of your life - they were lying.

Tomorrow I have to come up with ten interesting facts about myself...oh boy! Nah, I can do that. 
Thanks for reading...and maybe I should have made it up, but I didn't.

Cheers
Kerry x

ps I'm posting this a teensy bit early but I have a very busy day coming up tomorrow and I don't want to miss a day!