Blog 377 – 08.17.2016

I happen to think that no kiss is without significance. When my dear departed daughter Emily was a little girl the conclusion of her evening bed time ritual after some reading, prayers, and final drink of water, always involved several good night kisses to include Eskimo kisses (rubbing noses) and butterfly kisses (blinking your eyelashes close enough to brush the other’s closed eyelids.) Tender kisses to be sure.

The first girl I ever kissed was my beautiful cousin Brenda. We were both five or six years old. I have loved her all my life and expect I always will. In the movie Hearts In Atlantis a man who can see into the future tells a young boy that a kiss at the carnival will be the kiss by which all others is judged both by him and the girl next door. We have, most if not all of us, experienced first-love kisses like that. Anton Yelchin, who played that young boy before he became Ensign Pavel Chekov in the recent Star Trek movies, died last month in a tragic accident.

During one of the first days of attending a college many miles away from home a pretty young girl named Tish from Louisiana and I kissed on the carpeted stairs of the student center for an entire afternoon. An excellent cure for homesickness and a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

I shared a couple of days ago a tribute to one of my favorite teachers. Don Crane cast me in the lead of our school’s ninth grade spring play opposite one of the prettiest, sweetest, and most popular girls in our class. Most, of the boys, myself included, dreamed of getting to kiss Jan. And I was to get to kiss her on stage in front of God and the whole East Lake Junior High School student body and faculty.

I had known Jan since fifth grade. She lived just a couple of blocks from my house. We rode bikes together and on one of those rides together one summer I had showed her may favorite special spot. For a whole semester in eighth grade typing class I had typed love poems to her signed “Your Secret Admirer” and slid them through the louvers of her locker at school when no one was looking.

To me Jan was a young version of Mary Tyler Moore, popular then as Laura Petrie, the young beautiful wife on the Dick Van Dyke Show. I had dreamed of that kiss and wanted it so much but still went to the play Director, Mr. Crane, privately and asked him to change the kiss to a hug. He did and even then I am sure that Jan could feel my pounding heart during that brief hug, one of the most memorable of my life.

A thirteen year old me and even a sixty-five year old me is grateful for that hug and the kiss that for nobody’s fault but my own that never was. There was a love ballad popular back then that said, “Tell Laura I love her…tell Laura not to cry. My love for her will never die.” Sweet Jan it never has and I expect it never will.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White