The Worst of Firsts

I went on my first date when I was 13 and in the seventh grade. It seems so very young to me now especially considering that my date was a senior in high school. Before you start sending scornful letters to my parents, it wasn’t all that scandalous. We were in church youth group together and our destination was a Christian school, band-boosters bon-fire. Oh yeah, wild and crazy kids we were. And you should also know that I literally begged my poor parents to death, even to the point of enlisting my Art teacher to debate on my behalf. I coerced him into offering the ever so logical “if she’s proven herself to be trustworthy and it’s a safe group environment, holding her back may only spur future rebellion” argument. Shameful manipulation.

It is at this point, looking back, that I wish my mom had said, “Amie, this isn’t about us not trusting you. It’s about the fact that you are an idiot and have no idea what a complete waste of time and energy this will be.” Admittedly, I would have still followed with a string of pretty, pretty, pretty, pleases and been just as determined as ever because as stated, I was an idiot.

The big date proved uneventful unless you count the butterflies in my stomach and the uneasiness of being eyed by a bunch of snotty Christian school girls I’d never met before. But it did lead to future dates and eventually to that monumental milestone known as the first kiss.

You dream about it. Envision it. Your eyes lock and he tilts your chin into position while his other hand softly clasps the back of your neck. You lean into each other and then…WAKE UP because that ain’t the way it happened. I never pictured it taking place in the back seat of a car with the goon’s cousin (who will come up again in the story) gaping at us in the rearview mirror like some ten cent peep show. If the guy who bequeathed to me this memory ever happens to read this –no offense. But seriously, I could’ve been licked by a cow and remembered it more fondly than that.

So, the unspectacular first date led to the unpleasant first kiss which led to a few other firsts in my life: the first time of being cheated on by a boyfriend, the first time of spending an insane amount of money on said cheating boyfriend for Christmas, and topping the list…the first and only time said cheating, ex-boyfriend spread rumors that I was pregnant and had been excommunicated from my home church.

How a guy whose kiss repulsed me could imagine that we had done more than that was beyond me. Even so, I had made my way into the grand and troubled world of teenage relationships by picking a real winner. Surely, it could only get better from here.