"Standing on Your Mama's Porch..."

The 20SB January Carnival's theme is your first kiss. I've never really written about my relationship past on here, and because this blog isn't entirely anonymous, I'm going to keep most of it fairly brief and impersonal. I can, however, talk about my first kiss.

All I Need by -roosevelt-

I've always been a bit of a late bloomer. I guess I haven't yet even exactly bloomed all of the way, but that's beside the point. It was the summer after my first year of university. I was 18. That summer I was the Environmental Learning Coordinator at camp, and as senior staff, I lived at camp from April until August. At 18 I had never had a boyfriend, never been kissed.
One of my friends who worked at camp with me had moved to Florida a few years back because of a parental divorce/remarriage, and he was due to work at camp that summer. He ended up driving back to Ontario with a friend that he went to school in Florida with, and, being short on male counsellors for the summer, we asked his friend (who, from now on, we will call The Surfer) if he wanted to stay and work at camp. This guy was always up for an adventure and trying new things, so he rearranged his summer plans to stay. Our group of camp friends would get together whenever I had time off from camp, and The Surfer would join us, so between that and camp training, I got to know him before the camp session actually started. After our first whole wee together at camp, he made up a lame excuse for us to spend the Saturday together, kind of like a date. Another week went by at camp, and we spent the Saturday with our group of friends taking a trip to one of the neighbouring cities so we could go shopping and to the movies. We held hands in the movie theatre. Our friend who was driving dropped me off at home that evening, and The Surfer offered to walk me to the door. We talked for a few minutes and he told me that he was amazed that I had never had a boyfriend before, and asked if maybe he could be my boyfriend. Of course, I was smitten and overwhelmed and said yes. I was standing on the step on the porch and he was standing on the ground, making us about equal height because he was very tall, and then he leaned in and kissed me. I had never realized how amazing something so simple as touching lips could be. We said goodnight after that simple kiss and they drove away. I immediately ran inside and jumped onto my parents' bed with maybe the biggest grin ever to announce with a squeal that I had a fantastic day and that he kissed me.
And there we have it, my first kiss. The relationship didn't end perfectly, I got very hurt and have spent the years since then building up walls to protect myself from getting hurt again. If I could re-do that relationship, I would do things very differently. However, even if I could re-do that first kiss, I wouldn't change a thing. Being gently kissed on your parents' porch on a warm July night is pretty much the perfect first kiss.

(title lyrics from Bryan Adam's "Summer of '69")