This was not the version I originally was looking for, but after seeing it I liked the sign language and visual elements that added.
So this sort of sums up my first love. It was the summer between seventh and eighth grade. Seventh grade had been hard for me, I didn't have a lot of friends and so struggled socially. I also seem to remember my classes being tough as well for me at the time. Heck all of middle school was awkward for me, anyway... So, I was on the local swim team and had made some friends. My best friend Trent had started "going out with" this girl Erin who lived in my neighborhood and also was on the swim team with Trent and I. Erin had this best friend, Tara, so typically the four of us would do things together. We mostly went to the YMCA when they had teen nights and ran around and Erin and Trent would make out, we mostly egged them on by playing truth or dare where really the only people who did anything were Erin or Trent. So, I am hanging out with these three and since Erin and Trent are off making out at times, Tara and I start talking and become pretty good friends, we also had this little flirt thing going, I think. So I remember it is the last day of school and we were allowed to walk home to Erin's house where her mom, I think I am remembering this correctly, drove us to Trent's house where he had a pool. I know we walked back to Erin's house which was near my house and I know we went to Trent's I am just not sure of the exact details. As I am writing this I remembered something that I had sort of forgotten about, on the walk home we went through this nature area that was still ont he school property and Trent and I had squirt guns which we then were squirting the girls with. I also remember Tara and I fighting over the guns, this kind of flirting and touching without actually knowing what we were doing thing. Anyway, so we end up at Trent's house and I remember we were just swimming around playing. We ended up in this game where we were trying to give each other wedgies in our bathing suits, and of course Erin and Trent were doing their thing and Tara and I were doing our thing. So each couple (although Tara and I were not a couple yet) were just flirting and playing around. Tara had to leave at one point, she had an orthodontist appointment, I think (it is amazing the details that I remember from this day). So she left her stuff including her yearbook as she was coming back and told us to sign it while she wasn't there. I signed it and in it I asked her to "go out with me". I thought this would be easier than actually having to say the words and would be more romantic or something not quite sure. So, of course, Erin and Trent saw this and wanted to know what was going to happen. I went home and Tara stayed at Erin's house that night, so I got a call later that night that Erin and Tara wanted to walk around the block with me. I said Ok and then we walked around the block and Tara and I talked, after a few times, she said that she would "go out with me". I was very excited and I seem to remember Erin doing a cartwheel or something because she was also happy. So the next day the three of us hung out and I had my first kiss. We were playing truth or dare, it was basically a set-up for me and Tara to kiss and I don't think I was that naive that I didn't know this, I mean it was me, Tara, and Erin. Anyway, so I had my first kiss in the shower.
I love using that line it makes it sound so naughty and yet of course it was innocent. We had been dared to kiss and we just couldn't get any privacy. The room we were in Erin or her sister kept waling into, they wouldn't leave us alone even though Erin was the one who had dared us. So Tara and I decided to go into the bathroom to kiss and they kept knocking on the door, so finally we went into the shower and had our first kiss. We didn't see each other again for a bit as I went to my grandparent's house near Boston. When I got back I had phone calls from all three of them, Tara, Erin and Trent. So I called them in order of importance, Tara first, but she was out on a walk. Erin next but she didn't really want to tell me what this was about. Trent finally told me that Tara had started "going out" with another guy she had met at Bible school. So I finally talked to Tara and she confirmed it and said she had wanted to "go out" with this guy for a while. So we broke up, but that is not the end of the story. I continued to hang out with Tara as we stayed really good friends, I don't really remember being all that heart broken. My mom tried to cheer me up, but I was fine. So, I continued to hang out with Trent and Erin and Tara and we continued to go to the Y for Teen Nights. I remember now Tara and I now became part of the truth or dare thing where we were dared to do things as well. So while she was dating Neil, the other man, she and I continued to kiss and I even had my first french kiss with her, so I guess I was the other guy. I did get a phone call from Neil once, threatening me because he suspected something was up because she and I were such good friends, she was basically my best friend that summer. Both Tara and I denied it and he just couldn't prove anything so he threatened and nothing really came of it. Toward the end of the summer Tara and Neil broke up. Tara and I were still friends so I remember going over to her house one last time and we talked and stuff, it was good, we were friends and it was just the two of us. I had been there a bunch of other times as I would hang out with Erin and Tara and Trent there occasionally or I remeber my brother and I riding our bikes up to her house as it was not that far away. But this time it was just the two of us. We ended up dancing in her living room for what seemed like several hours, but I am sure was only maybe an hour. Anyway, this also was the first time we really just had a long make up session which happened as we wer dancing in her living room. How we started dancing I am not sure, I remember we started to dance to one song and then stopped and then danced to another and then just never stopped till my father called and I had to go home. I also asked her to "go out with me again" and she thought about it while we danced. She finally said no, that she wanted to be single after dating Neil. This is when I was finally heart broken. I spent the next few weeks depressed. I listened to this song obsessively.
Tara had made this tape for me and it was a song of heart break so I was obsessed, I listened to most of this Def Leppard album, Adrenalize, all the time.
Tara and I didn't talk through eighth grade, but we did see each other at a move up dance where the eighth graders went to a high school dance (this was one of three dances I went to in high school). We talked again that night and even danced I think. We went to homecoming that year, but nothing ever really developed and I have no idea where she is or what she is doing. I think she got married, but I am not sure.P.S.- DCup you were right that was good for the psyche. That song still takes me back to that point in my life every time I hear it and just did when I listened to it this time.
2 comments:
I lost track of my first love sometime around 1994, I think? I was just 19, he was only 15 (I know, cradle robber). In 2004, I found out that he had actually moved to the same state in which I then was living. We ended up having lunch. It was actually quite hilarious. He was about to get married. He was a terrible flirt. He was quite offended at the suggestion that what we had had was puppy love and not something deep and eternal. Dude, we hadn't talked in ten years! It couldn't have been that deep or real!
Last I heard, he actually was married with a kid on the way, a kid he absolutely did not want, and was well on the way to becoming an alcoholic. Quite sad, actually.
Boxer - This is a sweet story. It is good to write about it, I'm convinced. I'm glad you wrote it.
You should print off this post and keep it for the long haul.
And, as always, thanks for the props.
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