I am now going to begin a series of first kiss blogs. Is this merely a way to prove that I have indeed been kissed?
Well, sort of…
What does this have to do with writing???
A lot. I’ve recently realized that while none of my characters are me, that I occasionally use back-story incidents( that I’ve manipulated a lot) of my life to fill out the back story of their lives.
So, here is a story of one of my first kisses.
I was sleeping over JJ’s house. She was a Reagen Republican and I was the only fifth-grader in NH who liked Jimmy Carter. I loved Jimmy Carter, actually.
JJ’s mom was a nurse and she quilted, big crazy quilts with velvet in them and fluttery stitches, which was really cool. Everybody in JJ’s family was large and tall and rugged. Her dad was around seven feet tall. I felt like a short unhairy hobbit in their log cabin, which was kind of cool because I liked hobbits even if I didn’t like all their hair.
So, we were all hanging out upstairs, JJ, her fourth-grader brother named Eric, and me. We snuck downstairs for some apple pie and there in the middle of the living room was her big mama dancing with her huge father to a Kenny Rogers tune. I think it was “Lady.”
The one that goes, I’m your knight in shining armor and I love you…
“EW!!!” J.J. screamed and we all slammed up the stairs, totally disgusted by the thought of parents dancing.
After a long talk about how grosser than gross parents are Eric went, “I hate Kenny Rogers.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Who do you like?”
“ACDC,” I say, which was true, because all the cool kids in my grade liked ACDC because they had a song called “Big Balls.” I had no idea what that song was referring to because I was an idiot, but I liked to sing it at the top of my lungs in my bedroom while my mom was still at work because I knew it was somehow naughty.
Eric looked at me in shock. “Cool.”
I nodded in a way that I hoped conveyed that I thought it wasn’t a big deal.
“I love ACDC,” Eric said.
JJ then called him a twerp and told him to go to bed.
JJ and I hunkered down and read books. We had to read the Hobbit for English.
I’d read it before and was just skimming it because I was lazy. We finally shut off the lights.
Maybe two minutes later JJ’s door slammed open and someone smashed through the pitch black room and threw his chunky boy body on top of me in the bed. He screamed in a huge, deep, scary voice, “ACDC WOMAN!!!”
And then he kissed me. Pow. Sort of on my lips, but mostly on air because my mouth was open wide and screaming.
JJ threw on the light and her brother leapt up and out of the room, throwing the words “I love you, ACDC Woman” over his shoulder.
JJ, horrified, gaped at me. “My brother kissed you.”
I nodded. “I know. I was there.”
She glared at me. “Shut up. You like Jimmy Carter.”
“You like Reagen.”
“My brother,” she declared, “should have better taste.”
How about you? Did ACDC ever get you kissed? Do you have weird first kiss stories? If you’re a writer, do bits of your past ever end up in your characters’ back stories?
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THIS IS WHAT IT’S ABOUT
Rosie Jones, small town reporter and single mom, is looking forward to her first quiet Maine winter with her young daughter, Lily. After a disastrous first marriage, she’s made a whole new life and new identities for her and her little girl. Rosie is more than ready for a winter of cookies, sledding, stories about planning board meetings, and trying not to fall in like with the local police sergeant, Seamus Kelley.
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Gasp!
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