When I was in elementary school, the kids had two rites of passages to be popular:
1. You had to be involved in sports. The A team (better players) were the most popular. The B team (medium players) were second in line. The C team was your last hope. It was for people who were had the heart, but who weren’t quite as good.
2. You had to french kiss someone.
I sucked at sports, so I was never in anything except an extremely short-lived stint on the Cross Country Running team (where there were no A, B or C teams). I didn’t french kiss someone until I was a month short of my 15th birthday. Guess how popular I was. No, really, guess.
I was nearly always second-to-last picked for sports teams, and was extremely unpopular. THOUGH, I was friends with all the popular kids, for some reason. They didn’t treat me very well, but it was a lot better than the other option- to hang out with the other nerds.
In grade five, I was invited to a popular kid’s birthday party. We hung out in the basement, and the sole reason for girl/boy parties was to sneak off and french kiss in some dark corner, proving it by swapping gum from one person’s mouth to another, therefore transforming yourself into a popular kid. At this particular party, there was a boy named Andrew Smith- and we all knew that this was his night to move from a normal kid into having super popular powers because he was going to french kiss a girl from another school.
It took a lot of build up, but they finally found their corner, kissed, and went back to their opposite sides of the party room. I was sitting in a chair when she leaned over me and whispered that they had kissed. Excited and surprised that they had finally done it, I lept out of my chair, hitting her in the face (I think) with my shoulder. This swift action was completely accidental, but I hurt her enough to make her cry. People rushed to her, of course, to see if she was okay, and Andrew saw her crying in the middle of a crowd of girls. He thought she was crying about the kiss, and he was so broken hearted that he started crying too!
It was a complete disaster, and it was all my clumsey fault. I ruined their first kiss. Poor Andrew.
I’m sorry!
