(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)
Ah yes, we all know that this weekend is, for some, The Big Day. Valentine's Day and Christmas Day are the biggest proposal days of the year. You can tell by all the diamond ads on television. Oh the romance, oh the recession.... I suspect that the flower orders are going to be smaller this year, the jewelry less splashy (or nonexistent) and a whole lot more people are going to be noshing on chocolate instead.
And what's wrong with that? Is love about presents? It's not, am I right? Romance doesn't have to come with shiny things or expensive out-of-season flowers. No, it can be all about the smooching and canoodling, too. So in honor of the day, I give you a photo gallery from my local paper, The Chicago Tribune. Sadly, the paper is intensely hostile for me to post a link, so you will have to go to: http://www.chicagotribune.com and the galleries are on the lower right hand side of the home page. It's worth it - there are very cute pictures there.
Oh what the heck... Here's a poll, too:
Do you remember your first "real" kiss?
Can you tell us who? when? where?
(Check it out - the Valentine's Day special from my favorite paper The Globe and Mail Happy reading!)
I got a hell of a story about my first kiss. I was 15 and in a psychiatric hospital after a failed suicide attempt (but I'm feeling MUCH better now). Met a girl there who was going through similar severe personal psychological issues---the guy who'd taken her virginity dumped her the next day and she flipped out and slashed her wrists. Fun!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, one thing led to another and with a little help from another friend on the adolescent ward keeping watch, we'd go into the dayroom when the staff was having their shift-change meeting, leaving us unattended for about 10-15 minutes each afternoon. Those stolen moments were the first real intimacy I'd ever had with anyone in my life.
Of course it didn't last---she got out, I got out, we lost touch and went back to life outside the nut house. But I'll never forget her.
Geez, Fox. Heckofa kiss there, dude.
ReplyDeleteMine was Laura Becker, after square dancing in second grade, right in from of my buddy Bob who thought she was his girl. Sublime, somewhat uninteresting, and in my case, bloodless.
Actual first kiss: french kiss on a dare during a game of truth or dare.
ReplyDeleteFirst spontaneous kiss: during a reckless moment the first time I was drunk (I didn't cross any personal boundaries that night, though...)
First "real" kiss (not contributed to by extenuating circumstances): I remember the who and the where, sort of, but the mountains didn't move.
In fact, I've been pretty underwhelmed with kissing in general. I'm hoping that's just because I haven't kissed the right person (or type thereof) yet...
Yes I remember my first kiss - I was 16, got scolded for not knowing how, my friend (who soon had sex that first boyfriend) "going for a walk" with the HS Senior who drove the car, and the cops coming by to check on who was out parking. Ahhh, the wonders of young love.
ReplyDelete"out-of-season flowers" - while I agree with your take on the whole valentines thing, I can't help but chuckle that you have a picture [copyrighted 2010] of columbines in full bloom , while here in the Central Valley of California (it's 62 degrees and sunny today), mine are just starting to break ground. Maybe they grow through the snow in Chicago?
They are beautiful, though, as are all of the pictures you post.
I remember my first kiss but wont tell.... na na na
ReplyDeleteMy parents were divorced when I was five, so, my entire childhood was criss-crossed with Friday evening and Sunday afternoon Greyhound bus rides to and from their respective homes. My first kiss (French, real, enjoyable, etc.) was on such a trip, in probably about the 6th grade ('79-'80ish). The girl, I'd just met right there on the bus as we left Orlando, FL. We had until Lakeland, FL, (about two hours, with stops) to get to know each other, thoroughly offend the woman in the seat in front of us with our banal barely-teen, thinking-we're-cool-and-all-that talk, and to start making out. Her name was Cinnamon. I'm not even joking.
ReplyDeleteOoh, my first kiss.
ReplyDeleteWell, the records show that I crawled into the barrels on the Kindergarten playground on the first damn day of school to kiss Robert Cannon. They called our parents and from then on I was "The Girl Who Kisses Boys." I'd pick out a new boyfriend come every September as the object of my affections.
But my first "real" kiss? I'll give that to Marcus, my boyfriend from 7-10th grade.
We were at his house and we decided to go out to his treehouse in the backyard. We were climbing up the ladder, with him in the lead, and he stopped at about the second rung from the top. I kept climbing, and found myself standing on the second rung with him. We were pressed close together, facing each other. Our top halves were hidden in the treehouse; all you could see of us was four legs from the knees down. We stood there breathing hard for a moment, pressed tight together in that hot little treehouse, and things seemed to get very quiet and then we both leaned in and kissed each other. He tasted like Hawaiian Punch and had that excited coppery taste in his mouth. I hoped I tasted like the lemonade I'd just had.
After a while we came back in his house and his mom grinned at us and said "What have YOU two been up to?" Marcus said, "I was showing her my treehouse!"
Mmmm, first kiss: at a Christian summer camp in the mountains. We'd known each other in another town where I used to live before my family moved away, and having re-discovered each other at camp, he invited me to be his date for the last-night banquet in the chow hall. After the banquet, the shadows 'neath the tall pines were brimming with teenagers all snogging beneath a full moon. ('Twas evah so romantic, dahlings!) The next day, we waved sadly at each other as our separate buses passed each other, heading in opposite directions, one of us going north, the other south...and I never saw my summer-camp sweetheart again.
ReplyDeleteI was very shy, bookish, etc. in high school, hung with the geeks but even them I was shy around, but didn't want to miss going to the prom. I also did not want to go with anyone FROM my high school (screw THEM I thought). I was also HOT---I am not kidding. I don't think people really knew what to make of me back then. So a friend and I went to this movie theater where people "cruised" the parking lot(just drove around). I was on a mission. We met some cute boys from the catholic school nearby (beware those catholic school boys!). They invited us to come to a bonfire and we went. I stood next to this adorable boy in a leather jacket, feeling very awkward, not remembering his name, not helping him out in any way because I had no idea how to help him out. And he just turned toward me and kissed me out of the blue, and we started making out by the bonfire. WOW. I was 18. He took me to my prom two weeks later.
ReplyDeleteI was very quiet and shy and very fortunate to be spending 6 weeks in Austria that summer. A young man who had been an exchange student at my high school the previous year met our group in Vienna and took me to a beer garden and an amusement park the evening before we left Austria. When we returned to the hotel he kissed me goodnight and goodbye. I remember it feeling good but wishing it had lasted longer.
ReplyDeleteThat summer was wonderful ~ my first (and only) polka, my first rum cake (on my 16th birthday) and my first kiss! Now I don't even remember his name. Oh well.
First real kiss. Now remember I was a late bloomer and painfully shy (to some extent still am). Very interested in girls but too damn shy to do anything about it. I was 17 and returning from our senior class trip to Washington D.C. We were all getting on the bus, seating etc. I happened to sit beside a pretty girl I had known casually for several years. It was early evening, just starting to get dark.
ReplyDeleteAs tends to happen in high school, everyone was pairing off, we were together, and we just started kissing and making out. It was wonderful, scary, and I didn't want to stop.
I asked her to the senior prom. My inexperience ensured it was probably the most boring date she ever had in her life. I saw her once after high school graduation, she was dating a jock from Penn State and I never saw her again.