My first kiss didn’t happen quite as long ago as Jeanne’s (mine was 34 years ago), but it was just as poignant….. as least for me.

I was barely 12 years old when I met him. We were riding home from Hebrew school on the mini bus and I forget the exact details… but suddenly there was just something there between us. The tedious, darkening hours after public school spent learning prayers and traditions were the foreplay to those titilating rides home, even before I knew what “foreplay” and “titilating” meant.

I remember he rode to my house on his bike and I followed him to his house to meet his rabbit and his guitar. He showed up later that week to hand-deliver an invitation to his Bar Mitzvah– at which he basically ignored me while he hopelessly pursued someone cuter and blonder.

But the chemistry between us kept us connected. We spent hours on the phone, imagining what it would be like to be “together…” despite the fact that he hadn’t yet kissed me. That would not happen for almost 2 years.

My parents were away, and I had been left in the care of a grandmother who, at times, could be too savvy for her own good. He came to my house and we promptly disappeared into my basement (under Mom-mom’s disapproving eyes), where the only place to sit was a green booth seat left over from the days when my dad’s pharmacy had a soda fountain. He was a man on a mission– we sat right down on the booth. With barely a soft word spoken or a tender touch of hands, he leaned in, I closed my eyes, and he kissed me gently– oh! so gently– right on my lips.

I barely had reopened my eyes when he stood up and announced, “I didn’t hear any bells or see any fireworks.” He walked up the basement steps and out the door… while I was still savoring the amazement of how soft a boy’s lips felt on my own.

We eventually moved beyond that trauma and were friends for years. The memory of that first astounding, hesitant interlude is still with me– I even wrote a story about the two of us meeting in the afterlife that was produced as a play at our daughter’s high school. My husband’s first kiss was my second first kiss and had the stuff marriages of 25 years are built upon. But there’s just something about a girl’s face-to-face initiation into romance.