30 Day Writing Challenge--Day 3--Your first love and first kiss

I was a late bloomer and didn't have my first real kiss until the week before I left for college. Yes, I was one of those high school girls who had "never been kissed." Sure I had gone out on a few dates in  Jr. High and high school, but I never went to prom and never had a "steady" boyfriend. I worked at a summer camp all throughout high school and college and my first kiss came after a date with one of the other counselors, after a White Sox game. He was about to start his second year at Kansas...and considering I was heading to Mizzou at the end of the summer, we probably shouldn't have been together. (For those of you who don't know, Missouri and Kansas were very big rival schools). We had a short kiss after the game on the bus ride back to where our cars were parked in Deerfield and he asked me out on an "official date." I think we went to TGI Fridays and then he knew someone who knew Jim McMahon, yes, the "Punky QB" so we went to his house and swam in his pool. Jim McMahon was out of town at the time. He was a very nice guy, had a nice convertible car and he kissed me in the driveway of our house in Winnetka. It was a wet kiss, covered my mouth and my nose, but it was nice and he was nice. We exchanged phone numbers and I think we called each other once a few weeks after we had gotten to our respective schools. So, he was not my first love, but he was my first kiss and I'll always remember him for that.

Ah, my first love. Is it sad to say I was also late on that? I didn't fall in love until I was 25. Sure, I had crushes...lots and lots of crushes...but not one that I'd consider my first "love." I fell for one of my TA's in college, but that was more lust than love. After college there were a few internet romances, but they were all long distance and it wasn't really love either. I did meet the guys in person, but sometimes the person you meet online is not the person you meet in person. I guess my first love was also from the internet. Anyone remember the online service Prodigy? I had placed a personal ad with some of the other girls at work just to see who got the most responses. I had some really, REALLY bad dates from that experience and just as my ad was supposed to end, the advertising agency where I worked lost their biggest client so I was let go. I believe there were only 2 days left on my ad so I told some of my co-workers to just send me any responses I got. I got one last one. He wrote me a poem which was sweet. I met him for coffee a night later and we talked and laughed. He walked me home and in the next couple of days we went to a pre-season Bears game (even though he hated sports), and out to a nice restaurant. He got a parking ticket that night because after dinner we took a walk to the beach. He was 15 years my senior and was divorced with 2 young girls. He was an auto mechanic and never went to college but he was very intelligent and quick witted. He said he loved me first, which scared me, but I got over that. We ended our relationship after a year but remained friends for 11 years after that. We had a lot of great experiences together. We went through the death of all our parents together, and to this day, he is the only person I can travel with for an extended period of time and not want to kill at the end of the trip. We truly believed that we were "soulmates" and even with that moniker, it didn't mean we were meant to be together. He and I have gone our separate ways and we don't even speak to each other anymore, however I look back fondly on the times we shared and that he was my first "love."