My First Kiss

The first time I ever kissed a girl was in our bathroom, with the door closed. She was the dark haired beauty from across the street, and an older woman, at that. I was six, and she was seven.

I was a shy little brown eyed kid, but not so shy that I couldn't confess my love to the first girl of my dreams. She was across the street, not next door, but it was close enough -- and every boy should be in love with the "girl next door" at least once.

(It happened to me more than once, actually)

Telling her I loved her was the easy part, but after she returned the compliment, things got trickier. I never went through the "girls are gross" stage. Nope, I've always been a lover, even at six. And, with the confession of mutual love, the universe demanded action. Aphrodite required proof.

There had to be a kiss.

There was no way around it.

There were a couple of impediments to this smooch, not the least of which was the fact that she was taller than me. This may be the only kiss of my life that I performed on my tiptoes. There was also the possibility that we might get caught. We weren't sure why that would be bad, but something said secrecy was essential. I think it was those nervous little butterflies in my stomach -- up until that point in my life, those feelings only meant I was in trouble.

It's funny how love and guilt can both make you sick to your stomach.

So, we went to the only place in the house where we were guaranteed to be left alone -- or at least we could lock the world out -- the bathroom.



Then we just stood there, staring at each other. I remember my mouth being dry and my heart pounding like a timpani. My palms were sweaty. My breathing was coming in short, shallow bursts, and I was getting tunnel vision. No doubt about it, this was love.

I didn't know if I should shut my eyes or not. Bobby and Pam always shut their eyes when they kissed on Dallas. So did all those people on the Love Boat and the Dukes of Hazzard. Closing your eyes sure seemed like the right thing to do...but I didn't. I wasn't going to miss this kiss.

I touched her arms, and sort of pulled her close, in a six year old version of a passionate embrace, and then everything just clicked.

I went up up tip toes. She leaned down. Our lips touched...

This is in slow motion in my mind. In the back ground, the Righteous Brothers are crooning "Unchained Melody." The camera whirls around us, like a scene from a romantic movie. The wind blows up from beneath us, stirring her ebony locks. I shut my eyes, and feel the electricity to my toe nails. The world stops turning...for just a minute. Heaven and Earth move. Somewhere the goddess of love smiles...

The truth is, the kiss happened so fast that it was as much a head butt as a kiss.

But, I'll never forget that feeling. We have a lot of firsts in life, especially as kids -- first steps, first words, first bike ride, first day of school -- and I don't remember most of those firsts, but I remember that kiss.

I haven't kissed a lot of girls, but I've had my share of first kisses since that time. They have all been amazing in their own way, and most have had a lot more fireworks than that first time, in the upstairs bathroom. Kissing a girl isn't like anything else. Some have rocked my world, knocked me for a loop, and sent me over the moon. Some have been in passing and fun. One, nineteen years ago, was the best first kiss of all time - and my last.

But there is something to be said for being the first.

There's only one first, first kiss.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

The wee ones have been busy...

Three Star Wars Haiku Poems

Here are three Star Wars haiku. 

I even wrote them in lowercase, to increase the pretentiousness factor. 

You're welcome. 

two tatooine suns

droids lost, carrying secrets

wretched hive. scum...villainy

wampa and probe droid

tauntauns smell outwardly bad

a right hand is lost

a green lightsaber

brother. sister. forrest moon

 jedi have returned

My Earliest Memory

Spring 1975.

There was a park, just down the hill from our apartment. It was a typical neighborhood park. There were swings. This was when parks still had swings -- in 1975 we weren't afraid of our shadows. There were slides. They were the shiny, silver, metal slides. The kind of slides that seared your legs, and lit your pants on fire, on a hot summer day. And there was a big ladder made out of tires.

On this day, my brother Scott had taken me to play at the park. I was two and he was seven.

The scene opens in my mind, next to the swing set.

I don't know if we were coming or going from the park, but I remember the crunch of the gravel under my shoes, as I walked. This was before playgrounds had soft rubber pellets or shredded bark on the ground. On the tire ladder, there were two guys -- climbing, lounging, tripping(?) I'm not sure what they were doing. Suddenly there was a german shepherd. A VERY big german shepherd, and it was coming right at me. And then it bit me. More precisely, it bit my pants.

Scott put himself between me and the dog. At the same moment the two geniuses on the tire ladder -- who let their german shepherd run loose around a park full of toddlers -- started yelling down at us. They were saying that everything was okay, that the dog was nice, that he wouldn't hurt me. As far as I can recall, they never actually came down and got the dog. I'm sure they called it off, but the damage was done. I was traumatized. For the next ten years, not only was I deathly afraid of all dogs, but I was REALLY afraid of dogs biting my pants.

Scott took me up the green, grassy hill and through the gate that led to our apartment. Then the memory fades to a bright white light.

The memory recalls probably no more than five minutes of my life. But it was five minutes of my life with my big brother.

Scott died that summer.

He was being chased on his bicycle, by some older boys, and frantically rode out onto a very busy street in Salt Lake City. He was hit by a car, and died three days later. In 1975, we didn't wear bike helmets either.

I know what Scott looked like. Scott had large brown eyes, and straight brown hair. I've seen pictures. But I have no memory of his face. I know him from the waist down. That's how tall I was in the Spring of 1975. I remember his knees and his shoes.

And I remember his left hand because it was holding tightly to my right hand. That hand was keeping me safe. That strong hand led me home.

I have no other memories of Scott.

I will always be grateful to that german shepherd, and those two morons on the tire ladder and for the first traumatic experience in my life, because it seared the moment into my memory. And if you only get to have one memory of your big brother, it should be a memory of a big brother doing what a big brother is supposed to do.

First Sign of the Apocalypse: Dark Chocolate

Since I was ranting anyway...

What is the deal with dark chocolate these days? And why do we suddenly refer to it's cacao content? And who really knows what cacao is, anyway? And why does it cost so much more? And who actually eats it? More importantly who actually likes it?

Well, you must want to hear my theory, you're still reading. I think 97% Cacao Dark Chocolate is a sure sign of the Apocalypse. More specifically, it's a manifestation of our desperate need to be special -- to be seen as sophisticated. It's sort of like the bottled water phenomenon -- we won't drink water directly from the tap, but we'll pay extra to drink tap water from a plastic bottle, as long as we didn't see the water actually being put into the bottle. (You didn't actually think it was some guy's job to stand under some pure waterfall on Mount Olympus, and fill up all those water bottles, did you?)

Being seen eating -- or at least purchasing -- 99% Cacao Organic Dark as Coal Amazonian Rainforest Monkey Droppings Chocolate makes us feel just a bit better than that schlub buying the Mr. Goodbar, in front of us in line at Albertson's. And that's what really matters these days.

How do I come to this conclusion? It's easy -- dark chocolate tastes terrible. And the darker it gets, the worse it tastes. It literally tastes like dirt. I'm not being metaphorical, it actually tastes like you just licked the ground.

"BUT" you say, "dark chocolate is good for you."

Honestly.

It's candy. It's not good for you. It's job -- it's reason for existing --  is to NOT be good for you. It's an indulgence. Any health benefits of dark chocolate are negligible for (at least) two reasons. First of all, the amount you'd have to eat, to gain any real health benefit, would be enough to make you swear off chocolate forever. It's sort of the reverse of the lab rat that consumes the equivalent of ten times it's own  body weight in caffeine, and then explodes in his little cage. Clearly caffeine is not good for the rat, look at him, he blew up.

Secondly, chocolate -- dark, milk, semi sweet, white -- is a food full of fat and calories. If you ate enough to get the so called heart benefits, you'd explode, just like the over caffeinated rat.

Do you realize that the chocolate makers have to do less to produce dark chocolate? So, it's a product that costs less to make, more to buy and tastes like chalk?

The end of time is coming fast.

The truth is, I like dark chocolate, when it's offset by something sweet -- dark chocolate Raisinettes are my kryptonite. But, just straight dark chocolate? I don't need that much sophistication.

Go ahead, let me have it. 

I can take it.

Where have all the men gone? Seriously.

Where have all the men gone?

This is not a rhetorical question.

I see plenty of males wandering around, but I see few men anymore.

Now, I'm not one of those who defines manhood by the sports you play or your golf score or the number of animals you've killed or the number of women you've slept with or the size of certain parts of your anatomy. I don't think you're more of a man if you make more money than some other guy. I don't think your giant truck is anything but a giant overcompensation.

I used to differentiate between men and guys. Both are male, but of a different sub species. Guys do all of the things that I listed above. Guys are obsessed with their bodily functions, and sports, and think of destruction as an acceptable pastime.

I can't stand the "guyness" of guys.

But, the thing is, even guys, when push comes to shove, can man up, when the chips are down -- maybe not until ALL of the chips are down, but still...

The problem is the guy is no longer the lesser of the male species, he's now only second worst of three distinct males.

You have the man. The guy. And the new subset -- the Manchild. And that last one is like a virus, and it's spreading fast.

I look around and I see males in their twenties, living in their parent's home -- sixty percent of 18-24 year old males live with their parents. That is astonishing. And depressing. They dress like they're twelve years old. They spend their days playing video games and drinking energy drinks -- because otherwise they would have no energy at all, seeing as the only things they exercise are their thumbs. I had occasion to be in Walmart -- so consider the source -- a couple of weekends ago -- and I started watching the little families doing their shopping. More often than I am even comfortable talking about, here is what I saw:

Mom pushing a cart, full of groceries, with one kid riding in the cart, one hanging on the cart, one orbiting nearby...and the father/husband...dressed in the jersey of his favorite sports team -- including a stupid looking hat -- shorts (even though it was snowing outside -- I can only guess that it was because it was just too much trouble to put on pants, they were usually the kind of shorts that you don't even have to do up), and, more often than not, a good number of tattoos. He was tagging along, completely disengaged from what the rest of his family was doing, almost as though it was simply gravity that kept him in the same universe. I actually watched one guy who kept asking his wife if he could buy this thing or that, and when she would tell him that they didn't have enough money to buy that item, and still pay for groceries, he would pout and stomp off. A few minutes later he would try it again. I began to feel like a stalker, I spent so much time watching them. He wasn't a man, he was simply another child.

And I see this kind of behavior constantly.

There is nothing inherently wrong with playing video games, or cheering for sports teams, or doing a lot of the things that these men do. From time to time. I'm a big advocate of getting in touch with the inner child (so to speak). I find great joy in thinking about my childhood, and talking about it, and reflecting on it, and how it shaped me in to the person that I am today. But there are limits.

Something is wrong, and it's getting worse. These guys really don't seem to see that there is anything wrong with this kind of behavior. They have no goals, no ambition, no motivation and no worries. Someone will fix it. They actually celebrate this behavior -- because they live in a society that literally celebrates everything. It's selfishness, and narcissism. And here's the real kicker, the real danger, as I see it -- when these guys finally wake up, when they realize how hollow their existence is, when they realize that they're not NBA stars -- it's just an Xbox score, they're not soldiers, or police officers, they're just really good at shooting things on a screen, when they realize that all of those "likes" they get on Facebook, for reposting some video of some other jackass doing something idiotic, doesn't really translate into the popularity that they think they so richly deserve, when they realize that looking at porn  will never get them a real girlfriend, when they realize that they can't put a coherent sentence together -- hell, they can't even spell coherent -- and when they realize that they have no idea how to change anything -- when they have this moment of truth, and they stare into the black void that is their soul, something will snap. At the moment when they learn that their life is a worthless excuse for an existence, they will lose all hope for the future.

And a person who loses hope is a dangerous person. That's the person that takes a gun into an elementary school.

I have two daughters, and what awaits them frightens me. How do I protect them? More than that, how do I instill in them that, despite the examples of "manhood" that they see all around them, they do not have to settle for such a pathetic excuse for a man? This is more than the protective dad in me coming out -- I know there will always be a few good men out there, the ones who do it right. But, they're fighting a trend that is epidemic.

I think there are ways to reverse these trends, but I'm not sure we have the stomach or the will to do it anymore. Not when there's another party to go to. Another game to play. Another device to buy that we can't afford. Another shiny thing to look at. Another porn star to fantasize about. And a thousand other things to distract us from having a thought that last more than a half second.

Wow, I started off feeling a little sarcastic and then went into a full on rant...

Am I the only one that feels this way?

It isn't always easy to define what a man is...but what a man isn't? I know that when I see it.

Just not feeling it tonight...

I'm tired.

I'm feverish.

I'm achy.

But I haven't forgotten you.