Sunday Story: 16 and Never Been Kissed

Have you started sharing your stories with The Annoyed Army Wife yet?  Well, you should!!!  Welcome back to Sunday Stories!  When we left off last week, I'd settled in to life in England and mourned the loss of my first dog.  

Spring 1999

Big Brother and I were both in high school, he a senior, and me a sophomore.  I enjoyed my classes, especially a semester-long course I took on Shakespeare, reading his plays and even visiting the newly renovated and reopened Globe Theater in London.  I was on the varsity cross country team in the fall and varsity track team in the spring.  I had a pretty good group of friends, and despite living in a place where 16 year-olds couldn't drive, didn't feel as if my social life was stunted.  I could take the Tube (London's subway system) into town, so getting around didn't always require parental transportation.  

The only thing that seemed to be lacking in my life was a boyfriend.  In a school of 250 (100 of which were 7th and 8th graders), it was slim pickin', if you know what I mean.  Not only were there not very many boys, but there weren't very many good looking boys!  Sure, boys had "asked me out" (and now, looking back, I'm not really sure what that meant).  

In 8th grade a boy and I were "going out".  He'd call me every night, and we'd write each other love letters at night, exchanging them in the morning.  He walked me to class and we held hands.  After school he'd buy me a root beer and Reese cups.  He told me he loved me and I responded in kind, not realizing the gravity of such a statement.  He made me mixed tapes of songs he composed himself and wrote "for me" and invited me to outings with his family.  After a few months, I began to feel smothered.  He'd come to my house for a rare pool party (it was freezing and I'm pretty sure no one actually swam) and after everyone else went home, I was cleaning up, taking my stereo system back into my bedroom.  He followed me upstairs and cornered me in my room.  It scared me.  One night, during our evening phone call, he asked me if he could spend the night at my house, assuring me that "we wouldn't do anything, just sleep together".  At 14, and knowing my Marine father, that really scared me.  Who was this guy and why did he want me to grow up so fast?  One day, I decided that having a "boyfriend" was too difficult, so I called him up and told him "it" was over.  Apparently he was heartbroken and his parents even told my mom he was clinically depressed over it and that I should continue to "date" their son, no matter how I felt about it.  My parents took my side, of course, and reminded his parents that we were only 14 and this was no more than puppy love, if even that.  He never did kiss me.

In ninth grade, I don't remember bothering much with boys.  My friends all had dates to Homecoming, while I did not.  While they had wrist corsages and formal pictures, I danced with lots of boys and took group pictures with "the girls".  I had a major crush on a senior boy on the wrestling team who flirted with me mercilessly.  I thought for sure I'd get invited to the Prom as a freshman...until he asked one of my best friends instead.  I was upset, but my mom reminded me that Prom would be much more special as a Junior and Senior if I had never been before.

Which brings me back to the Spring of 1999.  I was in 10th grade and just before Christmas break, a junior from my cross country team asked me out.  His birthday was during break and he would be turning 18, and I'd never had a boyfriend over the holidays.  Mom took me shopping downtown and we scrambled to buy him both a Christmas gift and a birthday gift.  I presented them to him on the last day of class before winter break...and got nothing in return.  At night, he would call me from the dorms (he was a boarding student), and request that I call him right back.  In England, phone calls are charged by the minute to the outgoing phone number (in other words, if you make a call, you're paying for every minute, but the person you're calling is not), so this guy wanted to call me and talk to me, but he didn't want to pay for the call.  Needless to say, my parents were less than thrilled (especially since they're old fashioned and don't think girls should call boys unless they are answering a phone message).  When we returned from break, it was more of the same: he wanted to do things, but he wanted me to pay for them.  He bought me some flowers for Valentine's Day, and invited me to the Valentine's Day dance, but he didn't buy my ticket.  My parents threw me a huge birthday party when I turned 16, but he didn't bring me a gift.  I was tired of buying him things and getting nothing in return.  I was trying not to be materialistic, but I was feeling taken for granted.  I broke up with him during lunch one day.  He never kissed me either.

I was officially 16 and Never Been Kissed.  But that isn't the title of this post, so you know it's not the end of this long story (sorry!)...

By now it was Spring of '99.  I was running track and since my school could only use the track out in town three days per week, we often ran the perimeter of the soccer field on the other days.  Apparently I caught the eye of a senior on the soccer team.  One of my friends told me he was interested, and to be honest, I was too.  He was one of a very few boys in school that was easy on the eyes, 18, had a car, and a British drivers license.  We started sitting next to each other on the activity bus that drove athletes home after practice in the evenings.  He started passing me notes in the hallway and since he lived on the base where my weekly Youth Group meetings took place, we'd hang out on the steps of the base chapel for a couple hours those nights until I had to go inside.  That March, when I skipped school for a couple of days to go to Athens with my mom (my 16th birthday present) he told me he'd miss me and that he'd try to borrow his parents' car so he could take me out to dinner when I got home.  One evening, we got off the bus in front of the chapel together, and he told me he couldn't really hang out that evening because he had a lot of homework.  He put his arms around me, bent his face to mine, and kissed me!  It was my first kiss ever, and what was more, it was my first Kiss ever...you know what I mean!

...I was 16 and Never Been Kissed!

What I didn't know was that my mom (the Youth Group Director) was driving onto the base and turning the corner into the chapel parking lot at that very moment!!!