Now the relationship, after a year and a half after my
failed attempt at the dating thing I was still good friends with Ginge and I
made my first fundamental mistake, I told this girl, Ginge, that I had a crush
on another girl, Katherine, who is Ginge’s friend. It happened while I was
getting my science book out of my locker, I had a double science lesson with my
favourite teacher and was in a good mood and probably why I was foolish enough
to tell a girl such information. I was only aware of my mistake when I removed
myself from my locker looked up the corridor and saw the flash of orange as she
belted through the door at the end.
Now I’m just stood blankly while Paul leant up against the
lockers looked at me and I will never forget his reaction.
He pulled out his stopwatch on his phone and said:
“I give it 20 minutes”
At this point I still didn’t really understand what that
meant or what was going on.
And it only took 12 minutes.
Minute
1
With Paul in tow giving my minute by minute updates on the
time I went onto the school field and suddenly everything went into slow-motion.
Minute
3
DB was doing an open legged slide
tackle into a goal post in what can truly be described as a painful neutering
technique.
Paul was sneezing with a Twix in his
hand and was trying to cover has face and resulting in shoving the Twix up his
nose.
A short blond kid called Kyle was being
taped to a post.
And Ginge was talking to Katherine.
In an average break time these events
filled with many different, odd and brilliant things but these where all
fundamental in what happened next.
Minute
5
I flat out panicked and tried to run. I
turned on my heels my floppy hair in my eyes and ran, straight into Paul, as he
is much taller than me I winded him and he keeled over Twix in nose and jabbed
my eye with the violent bar of caramel goodness.
Doubling back blinded my feet got
caught up in the remaining tape left on the floor after the Kyle hostage taking.
And tripped onto the floor.
At which point a shuffling DB covering
himself and vision compromised by his tears he fell onto me pinning me and
initiating the school ritual of “dog piling”
Minute
10
5 minutes had passed while I relieved
myself from the dog pile and got my bearings, Ginge had finished her
conversation with the girl I was crushing on and there my crush was walking
towards me.
We have talked about that day since and
she sheepishly admitted to me that she couldn’t remember me before this point
and at this point is when I made my first mind clearing epiphany. I was red
eyed, bruised, sweaty, dishevelled, all thanks to the dog pile. And I wasn’t
going to get the girl. Why would she even look at me like anything more than
the scrawny geek? When this pretty brunette, who later became a beautiful women
would ever give me the time of day I wouldn’t know.
So I relaxed. My thoughts calm and I
smiled and actually said “Hey! Would you like to go to the cinema?” and she
twiddled her bracelets and said clear as day, “sure what time”.
So 14 years old and I had a date. I was
so excited I almost saved my friend Kyle if throwing grapes at him wouldn’t
have been so much fun. Sat in lessons for the rest of the days I was incredibly
happy and I had no idea why, but it was brilliant.
Having learnt my mistakes from my first
date, when I leant in for the first kiss I actually managed to without my date
needing an eye patch due to my custom built nose-rocket.
3 months passed and we went to the
cinema, the beach, met each other’s parents, (an event that is more daunting
for older people rather than when you’re 14 or so)
But a small peck for a kiss was all
people my age were capable of doing, only those older or in a relationship for
a longer time were known for dong more. In schools when it comes to first times
for anything we look upon our friends and peers to guide or advise each other.
One
girl (Roz) who was Katherine’s friend had been with her boyfriend for the best
part of a year, to Katherine she was an advisor as much as a friend, the
pioneer of our teens. We all attended one of the girl’s in our year 15th
birthday. While at this party we spoke
to Roz and she asked if we had “kissed kissed”, when referring to relationships
there is some odd ability to increase the seriousness or intensity of anything
from kissing to actually finding someone attractive by repeating a word, “do
you like like them?” for example.
I
and Katherine were dumbfounded, we hadn’t really discussed it. We were both not
exactly very good at talking and this was the longest relationship either of us
actually had had; we both left that party a little awkward but with plans to go
to town for a day together anyway.
She
asked me to meet her on the beach next to a bandstand our town had, we sat on
the beach for what felt like an age, both too embarrassed to say anything but
suddenly all that awkwardness went anyway and that day in the sun of Eastbourne’s
beaches next to its infamous bandstand, I had my first kiss. It was the first
time I felt actually good at being in a relationship, and that was one of the
best experiences of my life, I’d never felt anything like it.
She
went on to become my first love, and my first broken heart.
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