I’ve been meaning to join in on the Soap Opera Sunday fun ever since I met the famous Brillig at Applebee’s and laughed with her for hours- but it seems that I always get around to the blogging late on Sunday night and by then it’s practically Monday. So I feel too late. But I’m going to join in this Sunday anyway because this story has been forefront of my mind for a while so I’m going to share. Check back at ‘Twas Brillig and Walking Kateastrophe for the full details and other participants.

**Just a note** Stories are for the most part true unless detailed as otherwise. But as a participant in the stories- and since they generally happened at least 10 years ago (before my marriage to Mr. Right) I’m reserving the right to tell all Soap Opera Sunday stories to the best of my recollection- and with possible story improving embellishments. Also? Names have been changed to protect the innocent other participants.

The First Kiss That Never Was (the story of my first “boyfriend”)

The year was 1991(ish)…

His name was “John”. I was 13, he was 17. I was an 8th grader, and he was a Senior in high school. Now I know that right then there should have been warning bells. Ding! DING! SCREETCH!! But I was flattered, because, well- he was older. He lived about 5 houses down from me in a fairly secluded little neighborhood. His younger sister was a good friend of mine. (As more soap opera Sunday’s come around you’ll see this becomes a pattern).

We were ‘going together’. In Utah during that time period at least it’s how you signified that you liked someone more than you liked anyone else before you were 16 (able to date according to the LDS church). I’m not sure where you were supposed to be ‘going’ since it was generally before you were 16 and no one could drive and generally weren’t able to date. Now John could technically date, but wanted to ‘go with’ me. Looking back I can see why girls his age wouldn’t have wanted to date him (tall for his frame, pimply, sort of geeky). But at the time let me say once again I was flattered because of the age thing.

Now I didn’t really like John as much as I liked the idea of John and liked the attention from him. Most of our ‘going together’ consisted of notes passed back and forth and some hand holding and walks in the mountains behind our neighborhood. He used to write me long letters proclaiming his undying love to me and hide them for me somewhere close to the bus stop (I can’t remember where now). The high school bus dropped kids off before the junior high bus- so I’d pick up his notes and go to my after school babysitting gig where I watched a baby of my piano teacher for an hour or so after school every day while she taught lessons.

The baby was small and generally didn’t take too much watching so I’d read the notes and write back while I was babysitting. There are two things that stood out to me about these notes at the time- 1. They were always folded into shapes that I could never refold them into (shirts, hearts, boxes with a tab saying ‘pull here’ and 2. he couldn’t spell- at all. That used to really bug me. He was 4 years older than me but he spelled like a 4th grader.

Anyway, we were ‘going together’ for about a month, maybe six weeks and were walking out in the mountains together in the late afternoon. We used to talk a lot- not sure what about but this particular afternoon we were talking and stopped at one point to look at something. We’d been holding hands and all of a sudden he put his arms around me like he was going to hug me, and then his face started coming towards mine and it was like a slow motion horror flick in my mind. It took me about half a second to figure out that he was going to kiss me and to figure out that I didn’t want to kiss him. I did the only thing any rational 14 year old would do- I ducked under his arms and ran home- fast. It was an instinctual reaction. One I didn’t think about until I got home and was then humiliated in my mind. I was sure he was going to hate me forever.

Well- I was right. He did. His undying love that was professed in all those notes turned to mean and vindictive slandering of me. He trashed talked me to the other boys in the neighborhood and twisted the story to make me look like well, not a nice girl. I remember being so hurt- and it being a decision making point in my life. If someone who professed to love me so much could change his mind so quickly for not kissing him then I’d hate to see what happened when someone who professed to love me more would hate me that much more for well- going further than that.

So I decided at that time that I wasn’t going to go farther then that. I wasn’t going to kiss someone until I was sure I was going to marry them. Did I keep that resolve? Well- you’ll have to tune in to more Soap Opera Sundays to see. One thing is for sure- if I had kissed John then I’m sure he would have pushed further. I ran into his sister about a year and a half ago and apparently he’s had a less than pleasant track record when it comes to wives and children and girlfriends and restraining orders and childsupport.

So glad that I ran and didn’t look back.

Filed under: Soap Opera Sunday