It is
raining today. As I stood earlier
looking out of the garage I noticed that fall had begun in earnest as all the
trees were changing color and that I needed to go rake the leaves away from the
curb so they didn’t clog the storm drain.
I love autumn; it is my favorite season.
October is particularly nice because it contains one of my favorite
holidays, Halloween. I’m not a guy who
is a fan of horror or other scary things but I do like Halloween because it
brings people out one last time before the weather changes. I mostly like autumn because it reminds me of
my first kiss.
When we
first moved back to the suburbs of Chicago my family lived in a small house on
Edgemont Lane. Cheryl lived around the
corner and up the hill on Highland Boulevard. The first time I met her was in the summer
before third grade. It was in the vacant
lot we all called “the Field where the boys on our block would go to throw
balls around and the girls would pick dandelions, talking about whatever girls
talk about. Cheryl was there with her
sisters and some of the other neighbor girls.
She got into a conversation with my sisters. They introduced us to each other because
Cheryl was in the same grade as me.
In the
fall when school started I would see Cheryl, with her friends, walking to
school. Sometimes when I wasn’t walking
with my friends, and she was alone, I would catch up to her and we would walk
home together. We would talk. I liked her; she was nice to me. As we got older and I started walking by
myself up to the convenience store to buy comic books, I would see Cheryl in
front of her house and stop by. One day
she was sitting on her front stoop wearing a paisley bikini and some really
large costume pearls. I said, “Why are
you dressed like that?” She said, “I’m
practicing being a model.” I later learned
that Cheryl was in fact a child model when she was a kid. Thinking back I understand why. She had deep brown eyes and even then sort of
a figure.
Cheryl
and I got to be good friends but I never had any romantic inclinations towards
her. At that time in my life I was just
beginning to even know what those were. There
was a blonde girl named Kim that I had developed my first crush on. After school I would station myself on
sidewalks and linger with hopes that maybe Kim would happen by so I could walk
home with her. I held no high hopes that
Kim would return my affection. She was preety, smart and funny and I liked being around her.
That was sufficient enough for me.
One day
in the autumn of sixth grade when I was standing on the corner waiting for my
friends, Mike, Chris, Tommy and Kevin, when Cheryl came up, grabbed my head and
kissed me right on the lips. I didn’t
know what to do. The guys were just coming
up the street and saw it. I panicked and just ran down to where they were. I thought I would be teased mercilessly but I
wasn’t. I actually had a hero moment as
curiosity took over and questions about what it was like came flooding in. The hero
balloon got popped at dinner that night when my older sister, Melissa, who was
in junior high then, said, “I heard Tom got his first kiss today.” Then the teasing began from my parents and my
siblings. No one has blushed as much as
I did that night. “Laugh it up,” I said,
and went up to the room I shared with my brother.
On Halloween Cheryl came into our backyard
where I was sitting on one of the swings under our willow tree. I was dressed as Tom Sawyer; she was still
dressed as a witch. She sat down on
another swing and said, “I’m sorry.” I
told her it was all OK. I asked her
though, “Why did you do that?” She smiled
and said, “The horoscope in my Dad’s paper said it was a good day for me to
have a first kiss.” I asked her, “Was it any good?” She laughed and got up to go home. “Not bad but you need to work on it.”
Cheryl
and I remained good friends throughout junior high and high school. Occasionally, I would see her in the hall and
she would blow me a kiss. I would point
at her and ask, “Horoscope?” She would laugh and say, “Horoscope.” I never learned how to type. I still don’t know how to do it today. My handwriting is terrible too because I never
learned how to do cursive writing. When
we lived in Florida they taught it later and when we moved back to Illinois all
of the kids already knew how to do it.
When we were late into high school Cheryl was in the vocational program
learning to be, what was still then called, a secretary. She could type like crazy. Whenever I had a paper or a story that I
needed to have typed Cheryl did it for me.
She would to my locker holding reams of paper to give me to make sure I
had them ready in time. She typed all
of my college admissions forms.
One day
just before graduation Cheryl brought me a typed version of a story I had
written that I was submitting for a contest.
I have always been a distracted person and often don’t notice when
things go astray in my personal appearance.
Cheryl said to me, “You have something on your shirt.” I looked down but there was nothing
there. When I looked up confused, she
grabbed my head just like she did when we were in sixth grade and kissed me. This was not the same kind of kiss I got when
I was a boy. I was stunned. I just asked, “Horoscope?” She straightened the lapel on the sport coat
I was wearing, smiled and walked away. Over
her shoulder she said, “No, I just wanted see what it would be like now.”
I was a
serial dater in high school, but never any good at keeping them because I was
too self-involved. At the time Cheryl kissed me I had just started going out with
another girl, named Ann. When I went
home that night my friend, Kevin, stopped by. I was at my desk and he was lying on my bed, leafing
through Rolling Stone and smoking. The Eagles were playing on the stereo. I told him about Cheryl kissing me. He asked, nonchalantly, “Was it a good kiss?” I said “Tonsil rattling.” He laughed.
“You know she’s in love with you, don’t you?
I think she’s always been but you were never available and she didn’t
want to mess up your friendship.” I
said, “You’re crazy.” He laughed again. “Are
you that stupid? No girl types that much
if she’s not in love. Besides, why else
the kiss, man?” I had to think.
After
graduation I never saw Cheryl again. She
doesn’t come to reunions and I’ve never found her on the internet or on Facebook. From time to time in the fall I think about
her and try to find her again, if for no other reason than to tell her thank
you. She read all of my writing and was
always very kind and supportive. We
would frequently meet in a fast food restaurant and I would buy her lunch. She would make good suggestions that I would
use. She is one of the people who believed
in me and thought that I could one day be a writer. She was a great friend and
deserves my gratitude. I would love to
know how she is doing.
More
than anything Cheryl holds a special spot in my heart because on an autumn
morning in October, before I knew anything about these sorts of things, she gave
me my first kiss. I think pretty much
everyone remembers that time in their lives of first kisses and first crushes and that’s really not a bad thing
to remember.
