First Love

He liked me, a lot...enough to drive over 20 miles in the opposite direction of our high school to pick me up every morning to take me and my best friend Kelly (his younger sister) to school.  I could tell right away that he liked me but I don't think it was quite so obvious to him.  In fact, I think he fought it the whole time, in part due to outside influences and in part due to a different type of influence, one that he was not able to overcome in the long run until it proved too late, which was sad because I would have married him.  Later, many years later, I learned that he and his wife (a friend of mine) had three sons.  I thought it ironic because I had had three daughters.  What were the odds that he would have three children, all male and that I would have three children, all female?  If we had married, would we have had three children together?  Would they have been three of the female persuasion or three of the male variety or would they have been a mix?  We'll never know.  It's ironic too, that years later, while in my forties, he happened to bump into my brother, asked him about me and said, "She's the one that got away". 

He was mean.  You know how we always tell little girls that so-and-so in her class doesn't really hate her when he pulls her hair or picks on her, it actually means he likes her, well that's how his meanness manifested itself?  He picked on me any chance he got.  Told me things like, "Your ass is big as Texas", when I wore my favorite pair of jeans that I bought back home in San Antonio because the state of Texas was stitched on a back pocket.  But the appreciation in his eyes belied the statement.  Or the time when he went through my purse, dumping it's contents on the floor and stole a tampon thinking it was something he could hang from the rear view mirror of his truck.  Kelly and I laughed so hard we came close to peeing our pants.  Or when he laughed his head off at me after I touched that electric fence around the hog pen just as Kelly yelled to me not to touch it.  Too late, I was fried.  Then, there was the time I was hanging out with Kelly at her house (which was all the time) and he asked me to go to town with him to meet up with his friends.  We drove less than a mile and he turned around and took me back.  He offered no explanation, just said, "Never mind, not this time" and took off down the road, tires kicking up red dirt and rocks.  That one hurt.  That one told me he was letting small-minded people and their ignorance into his head.  It was, after all, the 1970's in a small town in southern Georgia.  He had green eyes and dirty, dish-water blond hair and my hair was, as I liked to call it, strawberry-brown (lots of red highlights and medium brown tones), and my eyes were brown.  My last name was of Spaniard descent and his of Irish.  People couldn't look past my outer appearance, all they could see was difference...so he ignored his heart.

When he wasn't listening to his friends and the adults in his life about how wrong I was for him, we had moments of splendour, maybe not in the grass but definitely on hot vinyl seats, and the freshly vacuumed carpet outside Kelly's room.  We held hands, we kissed until our lips were raw.  We talked about who knows what for hours.  He held me in his arms.  Did I mention, he had green eyes?  When he grew a mustache, kissing for long intervals became painful.  I always felt as if I had just raked my upper lip across a carpet...carpet burn, ouch!  But I kissed him through the pain.  I really liked kissing him.  We went on dates, usually double dates, with Kelly and her current beau.  Riding around in his truck, parking in dark, secluded areas, or taking in a movie at the outdoor theater, these were the things we did together.  Some nights when I spent the night with Kelly he would come to her door and call me out.  Sitting just outside her door we would kiss, and talk, and kiss some more.  We were very fond of kissing.  Then, one day, we were separated forever.  I had to leave Georgia, my parents destroyed any love they had once had for each other...but that is another story, for another time.  There was nothing he and I could do about it.  If we had had more time, I believe he would have overcome all his doubts, as he eventually did but it was too late by then.  And so, I became "the one that got away".  He will always be, for me, the first taste of love.