My First Love

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. There are some people that love that day, love the love and pinkness and presents and fluffiness. And there are some people that hate it, claim that it's a commercial holiday, that it's only for couples, and why do we need one day to celebrate our love for each other when we should be celebrating that every day.

I fall into the indifferent camp. I really don't care about it one way or the other. It's kind of like St. Patrick's Day or April Fool's Day; some people live to celebrate these days and I barely notice them.

That being said: in honour of Valentine's Day, allow me to tell you about my very first real boyfriend.

I loved him in the way that a 15-year-old loves: truly, madly, deeply.

He played football but I never watched him play. It occurs to me now that he wore a Northstars (local bantam team) jacket, but I'm not sure if he played high school.

He was shorter than me. He was a lot shorter than my very clumsy 6-foot-tall friend. He sometimes would piggyback her and she could almost reach the ground.

He loved me.

One time we were laying on a couch in his basement (fully clothed) flipping through a catalogue and discussing what our kids would be like. I noticed his mom standing in the doorway; he did not. Awkward.

He would let me use his car to practice driving.

He was exactly three weeks younger than me.

We broke up because I fell in love with someone else. That guy eventually went back to his ex-girlfriend.

He came to one of my dance competitions.

Before he came to high school, he went to the junior high where all the bad kids went. He ended up there because he was giving someone a hot ass (where you light you lighter behind someone's back and wait for them to feel the heat) and when she jumped her shirt lit on fire. Probably that wasn't the only reason.

He was a better person than a lot of kids that didn't go to the badass school.

My parents loved him.

His mom and sister were not fond of me. Probably because of that time on the couch and also because I had weird hair.

Our song was "Angel" by Aerosmith.

Part of me would like to see him and catch up but another part of me is glad he's left in the past. Knowing him now could take away all of the memories of then.

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