From many years ago . . .
My thirteen-year-old son Cailan wanted to ask me some questions about, well…you know… girls and stuff. How do you hug them? And kissing… lips opened or closed? Do you hold your breath? How long? How do you know its ok to kiss them? Do you chew gum or not? How do you keep your nose out of the way of the smooch?
Important inquiries these…
I didn’t tell Cailan, but he had asked the wrong guy.
My glands began their stirring in Jr. High. As memory serves, it was like an air from a wild harp… inside. Even then I knew I wasn’t going to be any child prodigy in romance. My first kiss… well the phrase ‘total disaster’ comes immediately to mind, and even that criticism falls far short of accuracy.
I was staring into the mirror one day and suddenly, it came to me: What makes kissing so difficult? I should have published my findings. The eyes – what you sight with – and the lips – what you land with – are four inches apart. [Yup, all by myself, I figured that out. Wasn’t all that hard, actually.]
This proves beyond any dispute that God has a sense of humor. It came to me – another landing on a previously undiscovered continent of thought – that if God had been serious about kissing [and not so taken up with practical jokes] He would have given us one eye. And put it in our mouths. That way, when you wanted a kiss, you just closed in on your target until everything went dark and bingo, you’ve got your kiss. But oh no! He had to offset them so you have to allow for gravitational pull, windage and lunar drift. Not to mention – when we weren’t kissing – we’d have to walk about with our mouths open so we wouldn’t bump into stuff.
So I practiced. I kissed the mirror, my teddy bear. I even put a small `x’ on the door jam, turned my back to it and spun around and kissed the `x’.
I didn’t want to be taken by surprise.
OK. Enough practice. I was ready for a field test so I called Bedelia Farqhuar for a date. [If you happen to know a woman by this same name, it’s not her.] She was a young woman easy to come to terms with. I don’t mean anything off-color by that, it’s just that Bedelia had no standards where males were concerned; she would date and kiss anybody, a suspicion confirmed indisputably by the fact that she said, `Yes, Lucky, I’ll go out on a date with you.”
If it hair-lipped the governor, I was gonna get a kiss that night; this was one developmental task I was not only going to hurtle, but conquer.
Having made this commitment, I spent the rest of the day with a dry mouth, twisted stomach; and made trips to the bathroom with an embarrassing frequency.
Bedelia and I were in the car or sofa or something, and the moment had arrived. I turned my head from her and stealthily tested my breath, licked my lips [I figured nobody’s gonna get off kissing #80 grit sandpaper] and let fly, eyes shut tight, with what I hoped would be a suave, cinematic swoon as I sampled the sweet nectar of Bedelia’s lips.
That’s what I hoped would happen…
It proved to be more of a bayonet lunge.
Well.
It might have been a kiss for the ages. Might have been. But I immediately knew something had gone horribly wrong; it just didn’t feel right; I had read somewhere that lips were not boney.
When I opened my eyes, I could see over her head.
Although no expert in romance, this suggested to me that I had shot a bit high.
I had a lip-lock on her left eyebrow; a defining moment in my life if ever there was one. I spent the next thirty minutes blowing hair out of my mouth, and the next twenty years developing a kissing technique which is, according to my wife Sabrina, ‘marginal.’ I’m not familiar with the word; Sabrina tells me it means ‘fantastic.’ I think I need to look that word up.
Sometime later, I called Bedelia for a second date. She said, “No.”
Well, despite my total unsuitability as counselor for my son’s problems, we talked about first romance. But we ran out of time. I knew I’d have to get back to him, this being an important topic and all.
The opportunity came about three hours later. He and same-age son Ches and I were in the car and I asked Cailan if he was comfortable continuing the conversation in front of Chester.
“Oh, I don’t need to talk any more. I talked to Chester and he answered all my questions.”
Thirteen-year-old Chester had answered all of his questions. I had no idea Ches was so long in wisdom in matters of the heart. As far as I know, barring blood relatives, Chester has been kissed only once in his life. It happened at a pool party.
`Some girl at the party had been `lookin’ at me funny all afternoon’. She snuck up behind him, unable to defer her yearning, pinned him to the diving board and prepared to plant a wet, sloppy one on him. He was concerned because she was three feet taller than he was.
And she wore a retainer. He feared for significant soft tissue damage.
Barely escaped with his life, to hear him tell it.
`I’ve already talked to Chester. He answered all my questions.’
The old man’s being put out to pasture. If you need me, I’ll be in my desk drawer; the one marked ‘Miscellaneous.’
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