A First Kiss
Sixty seconds doesn’t seem a long period of time but if you
consider the events that can occur in that period every minute of our lives
should be valued. An example would be the fact that sprinters should be able to
run one hundred metres six times! In a flooded part of the UK 10 tons of water
was being pumped from the Somerset Levels in the same period of time.
It is often the case that when you encounter a new situation
your first impressions formed in the early minutes tend to colour your opinions
and reactions thereafter. This was the case when I made a visit to Amsterdam
when still at school.
The six of us had been walking for hours exploring the city
but then the time came to return to the hostel. Amsterdam is an intriguing
place with streets arranged in a semi-circular design, Dam Square at the hub.
The hostel we were staying in was on a street with an unpronounceable name at
number 39. The buildings we were hurrying passed were in the high two hundreds and
industrial, we knew that we were going to be late and needed to rush. That was
the mistake. Perhaps if we hadn’t been in so much of a hurry one of us would
have noticed that the word ‘Nieuw’ was placed in front of the street name. Effectively
we had walked to the wrong end of a parallel road and once we’d corrected the
mistake and returned to the place in which we were staying we were exhausted.
We’d certainly seen more of Amsterdam than most of our friends!
Our little group consisted of three of each sex who didn’t
really know each other that well because we were in different year groups. The
girls were in the year above us lads. I think they’d been selected to chaperone
us! There was this one girl about the same height as me, with a peaches and
cream complexion, long brown hair usually tied in a ponytail, brown eyes and
brimming with confidence.
The six of us had been thrown together rather and so while
we were panicking slightly about being lost in a foreign city there was no time
for attractions between the girls and boys to begin to develop. On the other
hand the six of us being somewhat in adversity broke down some of the normal
barriers that exist between the sexes in the mid teen years.
Teachers have exquisite skills in admonishing pupils but being
away from home they were actually quite gentle with us, when we arrived at the
hostel thirty minutes late. Everyone else had eaten and we were banished to the
girls’ bedroom to eat a packed meal that had been prepared for us. I ended up sitting
on the same bed as Celia. I remember thinking it was an old-fashioned name but
she was quite relaxed and pleasant to talk to so we ate and chatted. The packed
lunch contained a boiled egg, still in its shell!
What happened next took place well within a minute but influenced
the next three years of my life. Don’t ask me why but fourteen year old me
decided that it would be a good idea to crack the shell of my egg on Celia’s
head! I know it was stupid, childish and likely to propel me to the teachers once
again for punishment. The disturbing thing was that as soon as I had done it I
knew that I’d hurt her, I knew that I’d done a stupid thing and I was
apologising before she’d finished reacting.
Our eyes met at that point and her gentle, brown orbs were
brimming with tears but not just as a result of the pain. I reached out and put
my hand on her head, her hair felt silky and apologised as sincerely as I knew
how. The next minute was electric. Celia could have screamed at me to ‘Get
out!’ and sort comfort with her female friends. She didn’t!
We were sitting quite close, facing, and leaning in towards
each other. The quality of the following sixty seconds was nothing short of dream-like.
Celia completed the distance between us and we kissed. I remember wonderful
feelings of warmth spreading throughout my body. It was almost as if we had
become one person. Everyone else in the room disappeared into an indistinct
haze. I don’t suppose that this first kiss lasted more than a few seconds
before the wonderful moment was broken by our cheering friends. I wasn’t
tremendously disappointed because I knew it would happen again.
I wasn’t wrong.
God Bless
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