Kissed a girl

I was 8 years old, maybe 9, I'm pretty sure that I had buck teeth and a page boy haircut. God help me.

To complete the image of me at 8 or 9 years old in your mind; imagine that I am wearing hand-me-down velcro tennis shoes, knee-high soccer socks, a sky blue t-shirt with "Benjy!" proudly printed across the front and shorts that would make Magnum P.I. blush.
Got that? Ok...Here we go...

Her name was Amanda, I think. She was cute, I remember that.
She was about as cute as a redheaded, green-eyed, pale-yet-befreckled girl could be, but I didn't know that she was cute back then...I thought she was gross, had a staring problem and was really, really grabby.

At the time I thought she was my cousin, which put me off bigtime because I thought that she was coming on pretty strong for being family...I mean, as young as I was, I knew that making out with family was generally a bad idea...also, at the time I was under the impression that making out led directly to Pregnancy and therefore Madness and Poverty.
Gimme a break, I'd only been tying my own shoes for a few years, I was figuring it all out.

Anywho...

We (my family and hers) were at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, California, if you'd ever been there you would know that unless you're very interested in Farm Animals, Indian Quilts and Hay, lots and lots of Hay; you would not be very interested in the Sonoma County Fair.
However there were and I believe still are some of the greatest and scariest fair rides in existence...I say greatest because every ride is great when you're a kid, and I say scary because I now know that at any given time the ride that you are on can suddenly burst into flames or come loose and fly across the sky before landing in a pile in the middle of the fairway.

That's right Folks! The really old and rickety looking Ferris wheel really is rickety and old...I think that the Carnies must lay bets at the beginning of every fair season as to when the the "Ol' Girl" will fall apart. I would if I was a Carnie!
Of course, at the time I didn't know any of this, all I knew was that this red-headed girl named Amanda was trying to hold my hand and kept asking me to ride on the same booth as her when we went on the Ferris wheel.

I was terrified. Terrified!
Not of the Ferris wheel mind you...that was a piece of cake, in my 9 year old world I faced death square in the eyes everyday and laughed as I sped away on my BMX with a baseball card flicking in the spoked wheels, making my cruiser sound much more menacing than it actually was.
But this was a different story altogether, I was feeling true and genuine fear...this crazy red-headed girl was trying to hold my hand! AND she wanted to ride in the same booth as me on the Ferris wheel! AAAGGHHH!! I was no dummy, I knew what happened when girls got boys alone on Ferris wheels...Pregnancy, Madness and Poverty...I didn't want anything to do with it; yet I was powerless against the iron will of the little girl that crushed my hand in a vice-like grip as she led me toward my destiny. I knew then what the Bible meant when it said that "...He was lead like a lamb to the slaughter." I was doomed.

So, it was there on that incredibly old and incredibly rickety Ferris wheel that the girl that I thought was my cousin leaned over and stole a kiss from me...she must have known that if I had not been 80 feet in the air on a spinning death trap that I would have bolted after puking on her shoes. As it was, I had no where else to go and could do no more to resist her pursed lips than close my eyes, scrunch up my face in the hopes of becoming less attractive and pray to Jesus that it would be over soon.

To my relief and further belief in prayer; Amanda did no more than give me a light kiss on the lips before turning away from me and giggling like a crazed person...she giggled like that for the rest of the ride and only looked back at me once or twice - I'm assuming to confirm that she had actually done what she thought she had done.

When we stepped off of the Ferris wheel I felt fairly certain that both my parents and hers knew that Amanda and I had been "Making out", I'm just guessing, but I think they may have known because Amanda and I were holding hands, grinning like idiots with bright red cheeks and glazed-over eyes.

I never saw Amanda again after that night at the fair and even though my memories of her are a little fuzzy and I lose a little bit of the memory as time passes; I'll still think of that red-headed, freckle-faced girl with grim determination in her green eyes whenever I think of the first time I ever kissed a girl...rather, got kissed by a girl.