You Never Forget Your First Time

Her name was Kim. And I was madly in love with her. I would lay awake in bed at night thinking about her, fruitlessly willing the hours to move faster so that I could see her again. Every love song I heard on the radio was written about her. How could they not have been? She was perfect.

I was in second grade and Kim was “the new girl at school”. She had moved in to the house next door to my friend Jared and I first laid eyes on her while we were jumping our Huffy bicycles off a makeshift ramp in the street in front of his house. She was playing in her yard with another girl we went to school with. I saw her giggling and pointing in our direction. She had straight black hair, brown eyes and was wearing a plaid dress. I was smitten.

“Who’s that?” I asked Jared.

“Oh, that’s the new girl, Kim,” he replied, completely uninterested in anything but our bicycle exploits.

The following day she was introduced to the other kids in our homeroom. Even though I hadn’t spoken to her the previous day, I had had twenty-four hours worth of daydreaming about her to know that we were going to be married someday. It was fairly obvious to me that I was the most eligible bachelor in Miss Young’s second grade class and that she would go weak in the knees if only she were to have a few moments alone with me. I would woo her with my ability to pile a stack of quarters on my elbow and catch them all while swinging my arm in a downward motion. There was the thumb-trick I had learned from my grandfather, where, by bending both my thumbs in such a way, I could make it look like I was pulling my thumb apart. That always grossed the girls out and that would make her notice me, and once she had “noticed” me, it was only a small step to “dating”, and then an even smaller step to “marriage” and “kids” and maybe even a “dog”.

Unfortunately, as much as I hung out at Jared’s and attempted to win her over by showing off my skill at jumping my bike off a ramp, I never got the courage to say more than the most perfunctory greeting every morning before reading class.

My friend Tobias would listen to my pining on the nights we would camp out in a pup tent in my back yard. We would turn on the radio and every time Air Supply or Foreigner would sign about the trials of love I imagined they were talking about Kim and I.

“You should do something for her,” Tobias told me. “Find out when her birthday is, and make her a present.”

Talking to her girlfriends on the playground one afternoon I was able to finagle the information out of them by pretending I was taking a survey for class. At one point, when I asked if they knew Kim’s birthday, one of her friends shouted out, “Dave likes Kim!! You’re in love!” and I quickly had to make up some story about putting together a birthday TREE for all the kids in our class and since Kim was a member of our class it was only natural that I find out when her birthday was. Luckily none of the girls bothered to ask what the hell a “birthday tree” was, because I had no idea what I was talking about. It just came out of my mouth.

Well, to my dismay, Kim’s birthday was not until March and it was only the end of September! I decided that I would at least make her something for Christmas. I had several months of planning, so I knew it was going to be good. If I could just figure out what she wanted…

My aunt had gotten me my first camera around this time (a simple 110 pocket camera) and I brought it to school to take pictures of all my friends, but mainly to snap a picture of my “love”. As I roamed around the playground snapping pics, I saw Kim running by and quickly clicked off a shot. Later when I got the film developed the picture of Kim is just a blurry body skipping by, with two long pigtails trailing behind her. You can’t make out the features, but I would secretly look at that picture and imagine a life with that blur. We’d have blurry little kids and a blurry little house.

At the same time all this romantic longing was taking place I was involved in Cub Scouts and we had our annual Pinewood Derby coming up. My father bought the block of wood and box of wheels, nails, and decals that came with it. We spent a good month carving the block of wood into something aerodynamic and stylish and I painted it red and stuck some lightning-bolt decals on it. I though it was a pretty amazing piece of work and I was proud of it.

When the Derby finally rolled around I entered my car and waited eagerly to win the prize that sat on the table in the corner of our school auditorium. As luck would have it, one of the wheels fell off as it made its run down the track and I was disqualified. I broke into tears. I had spent so long making this block of wood into something resembling a car and it was all in vain.

Or was it?

I kept my Pinewood Derby car on my dresser, not as a reminder of my failure, but as a symbol of my burgeoning woodworking skills. I decided I would build something for Kim for Christmas. I would turn my parents’ garage into my own little Santa’s workshop.

Months went by and I still had not worked on anything, but I had elaborated on my Christmas plan. I would not only make Kim a present with my bare hands, I would personally deliver it to her house on Christmas Eve! I wondered if I should attempt to climb onto the roof of her house and deliver the old-fashioned way—down the chimney—or whether I should leave it on her doorstep?

I spent a few days over at Jared’s house, secretly casing Kim’s house for a discernible way to get onto her roof and down the chimney. This proved unrewarding and I decided that the old doorstep was the best way.

When Christmas Eve rolled around I had still not built anything. That’s the kind of slacker I am. But I decided my plan would not go untried, so I took an old shoe box and carefully wrapped up my Pinewood Derby car. I left a note inside that said, “Merry Christams, Kim. Love, Santa.” I chickened out from using my own name, and figured I could find out at school whether she thought the gift was good or not without running the risk of embarrassment.

After dinner that evening I told my folks I was going over to Tobias’ house for a bit to trade presents with him. I left, Kim’s present tucked under my arm. Tobias met me at the end of my driveway and we walked to Kim’s house. (Since the idea was his to begin with, I talked him into joining me.) It was dusk and had started to snow, so I figured we could sneak up to the door unnoticed. The question was, do we ring-and-run? Or leave it for them to find in the morning?

When we got there the lights in the living room were on and I was hesitant to approach, fearing that the entire family would hear me and open the door together and foil my plan and laugh at me. These are the kinds of irrational fears I had growing up. Tobias gave me a nudge and I eased toward the house. When I got to the porch I carefully placed the box in front of the door. Then I had a vision of Kim’s father walking out of the house the next morning and tripping on the now-ice-coated shoebox and breaking his back. He would be in the hospital for months or maybe dead and the family would all have to take jobs to get by and Kim would have to leave school to sell flowers or do laundry and I would never see my true love again. So I moved the box away from the door, but not out of sight. Then I knocked lightly on the door and tore ass out of there as fast as I could, slipping and sliding in the light dusting of snow on the ground.

When we returned to school a few weeks later I asked Kim what she’d gotten for Christmas. She told me about some dolls and a Hall and Oates record, but no mention of my Pinebox Derby car. I wondered if they had even discovered it or whether it had somehow been overlooked and then thrown away.

Later at lunch I overheard Kim talking about her Christmas presents in more detail to her friends.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “And on Christmas Eve, there was a knock at the door and my dad answered and it was a present from ‘Santa’ and it was some retarded little wooden car! How gay!” And the girls laughed.

Oh well, I thought, next time I’ll leave a Hall and Oates record. At least now I knew what she liked.

I continued to pine after Kim until sixth grade, never making the move to ask her out or talk to her about anything more than what our homework assignments were.

Towards the end of sixth grade, Kim’s father died. Not from slipping on an ice-covered package on his doorstep, but from cancer. And the family moved away and I never saw her again. But I still think about all the years I spent thinking about her and wanting to be with her. And I still have that blurry picture of her in second grade in a shoebox of old pictures at my parents’ house.