Firsts

My first broken bone happened when I was six. I was swinging on the monkey bars in the neighbor’s backyard, dangling what seemed like miles from the ground. I remember wanting to be as smooth in my motions as the neighbor’s daughter, a girl three years my senior. I wanted to be able to let go of the bar and drop gracefully to the ground, unmarred and coolly collected. But when I brazenly let go of that bar, and dropped the six feet to the ground, I didn’t account for the fact that I am, well…me. My leg crumpled beneath me, and such a striking, searing pain shot all the way through my body. The screaming brought my dad all the way from next door. The ride to the hospital was horrendous, and the doctor put me in a cast from hip to toes. I spent the first eight weeks of first grade swinging down the halls on my crutches, trying not to fall or hit anyone with the cumbersome extremities. Who knew trying to fly would get me into so much trouble?

My first book I had to hide from my parents was R. L. Stine’s The Snowman. My stepmother studied with Jehovah’s Witnesses and had brought the teachings of the religion into our home when she moved in. From the time I was eight-years-old until I moved in with my mom when I was thirteen, I studied with them as well. You did not celebrate holidays or birthdays, you did not miss the minimum of three church meetings each week, you studied your bible and your literature, you did not partake in school parties, and you did not read unsuitable books. Some kids hide drugs, dirty magazines, and shoplifted items. Not me. I was probably ten when I officially had a hiding system down pat. I had books hidden in my bottom drawer of my dresser, between the mattresses of my bed, and tucked at the bottom of the stuffed animals basket. I won’t regale you with what happened when my stepmother finally found my stash in the bottom drawer a couple years later. It wasn’t pretty. But it didn’t stop me from reading everything I could. I merely transferred my hiding places from my house to my girlfriend’s. Problem solved.

My first kiss happened in an empty apartment in the complex I lived in when I was thirteen. After being sheltered for so many years, the freedom of that summer knocked the wind out of me, and when I could finally breathe again, I discovered how delicious oxygen could be. The boy was visiting his dad for the summer, and we spent most of our days swimming in the pool with the other kids our age, loitering in the parking lot like the good little hoydens we were, and generally being unproductive and enjoying the hell out of it. The apartment complex was small, and the owners, a small elderly couple, lived there with their slobbering bulldog, which liked to wipe its face on my ankles. The night before the last day of summer vacation, the owners took pity on the kids, and let us play in one of the empty apartments. What they were thinking, I will never know! I cringe as an adult to contemplate it! But there we all were, playing cards on the empty living room floor, flashlights our only illumination. When there was a lull in the card game, and the boy and I were abandoned by the others to go out onto the balcony, he leaned over, pushed my glasses up my nose for me, then kissed me. Caught between being mortified by my stupid slipping glasses, and wondering why I had suddenly sprouted the longest, clumsiest limbs and head, I simply stared at him. Probably with my mouth half open, and drool leaking out, although I don’t quite remember. Then he took the cards and shuffled them a couple times, and dealt out the next hand of Speed, as if nothing had happened. Two days later he left to return to Michigan, and I never saw or heard from him again.

Thinking of firsts gives me the opportunity to explore memories I may have shoved into the back of the closet, to bring them out and dust them off and see if they have any sparkle to them. I will be doing more of these on days when I am not trying to create something new. Feel free to give me ideas of other good “firsts!”