The First Obstacle

Scott and I quickly stumbled through the awkward beginning of an adolescent relationship. We wordlessly established unspoken rules, pacts and daily meetings. Scott would meet me at my locker every morning, and I would make sure that my girlfriends steered clear to give us our alone time. We would meet in between classes in designated stairwells, hallways, nooks and crannies of the school. And at the end of the day, Scott would walk me to my bus, and we would stand in the shadow of the dumpsters and make out until the very last possible second before the bus’ engines roared to life and we had to run to make it through the closing doors on time.

It was an amazing exploration. Learning to trust someone to be there when you expected them to be. Feeling proud and thrilled as we walked through the hallway holding hands. Discovering the intricacies of French kissing; the rough underside of his tongue, the smooth sides, the soft top. Figuring out the perfect angle to tilt our heads so we didn’t bang teeth or graze lips with teeth. Standing on tiptoe and craning my neck to reach him. Feeling the swollenness of my lips the entire bus ride home. Anticipating the phone conversation we would have that night, full of teenage nonsense and meaningless I love you’s.

We said the words without knowing what they meant. We said them without really feeling them, not knowing that one day, we would feel them so desperately and wish we could take back the first time we had said them to make them more meaningful once they were true. What we should have been saying, at thirteen and fourteen years old, was I’m fascinated by you, I’m insatiably curious about you, I am in awe of you. But when you are thirteen and fourteen, and your heart is full of feelings you can’t find a word for, you say love because you are desperate to be grown up. It is only when you turn eighteen, and then twenty-one, then twenty-five, and finally thirty, that you realize that every single stage of youth is wasted on the young. I’m even positive that, according to a sixty year old, I am wasting the youth of my thirties.

Scott and I got to walk through our comforting routine for three months before it was riotously disrupted. Shortly before the end of the school year, I learned that Scott would not be attending the same high school I would be matriculating to in the fall. Although we had grown up in small town upstate New York where you could still find acres upon acres of undeveloped land, the mid to late seventies had been an extremely popular time to procreate; the result was that one high school was not large enough to accommodate the teenage population of our school district. Therefore, Scott would be attending a high school across town.

We were devastated; if a month in junior high school time represented a lifetime, then attending separate high schools was akin to living on different continents. The inhabitants would be different, the local customs poles apart, and Scott and I would have to struggle through a language barrier. He would make friends that I had nothing in common with, and I would make friends he didn’t like. Our relationship was doomed, and we both knew it. We vowed not to dwell on it, to spend the summer being young and in love, and deal with the hurdle when it came time to jump it.

I remember so much, and so little, about that summer. As with many of those early memories, the summer floats through my mind in flashes of color, smells, sounds and feelings. When I think about that summer I smell chlorine, and I hear the sound of skateboard wheels on new asphalt. I feel the cold of Scott’s new braces pinching my lips as we re-explore the French territory with new metal boundary lines. I taste cotton candy, smell fried dough, and hear the sounds of a small town carnival, the wind through my hair as the Ferris wheel climbs.

What I remember most is how fast it went. One minute it was the last day of eighth grade; I was on top of the world with my steady boyfriend, feeling confident and secure and ready to take on the world. The next thing I knew it was the first day of freshman year, and I was in uncharted territory, alone, so small, and with absolutely no safe harbor.

Scott and I managed to keep our relationship afloat, but we were in for a rough four years.

Another thing that wouldn’t occur to me until years later: we both might have had a much easier time of high school without each other. But love is a funny thing.