Frogs and First Kisses

Do you still remember your first meaningful kiss?

We travel back to when I was seven, playing house with the neighborhood playmates I've known throughout kinder up to early grade school. It was summer and there were new neighbors coming and going on our street. We've been playing with the kids of a relatively new neighbor (if I remember it right, they moved to one of the apartments that my grandparents own a few months before school ended) for quite sometime. This little girl, the new playmate, was younger than me by a year. She went to a different school than most of us in the neighborhood so it was really during weekends and that summer that me, my siblings, and our neighborhood friends got to spend time with her, playing hide-and-seek, shake shake shampoo, monkey monkey annabelle, patintero, and all the street games that involved running and hiding.

That summer was the only summer that changed my life. I don't even remember her name. All I could remember was that one afternoon where we were playing hide-and-seek with our playmates. And why we ended up hiding in my dad's car was beyond me but that's when I just noticed her face was so close to me and there was nothing left to do but kiss. It was the softest, most innocent kiss I've ever known. And then I knew why I didn't want to be teased when boy playmates were hounding me. And I knew why I didn't want longer hair. And I knew why I liked wearing shorts rather than the dresses mom had me put on.

The next meaningful kiss I've ever had was when I was 12 and was officially taken by this girl who was also my namesake. We would spend afternoons hiding behind the school stage, holding hands and kissing. One time, the school janitor caught us kissing but luckily didn't tell on us. We spent almost a year as girlfriends but then I had to move schools for high school. Having a long distance relationship at such a young age was  not really ideal so she moved on to other girls and I tried to move on to boys at my school. The experiment stage came unfolding.

After having kissed frogs rather than princesses, I got my next meaningful kiss from a girlfriend in college. We were truly, madly in love and spending three years with this girl really put a dent, a good one, on my being. You could imagine how devastated I was when I decided to call it quits and she took me up on that offer.

I tried kissing frogs again to get me out of five years of rut but then all the frogs never amounted to the next girl who gave meaning to what it was like to fall in love everyday with the same person. We spent three years of laughter and love until there were no more laughs and love left.

In 2011, I kissed a bunch of frogs and princesses and to my amazement, although all were not as meaningful as what I shared previously with the princesses who came into my life, kissing is really an enjoyable thing when you are comfortable with the person you are kissing.

Wonder what 2012 will be like? :D