In eighth grade I was awkwardly courting a girl from class and I would go to her house to hang out every once a week to hang out. She had horses, and taught me to ride, and a trampoline too. At this point in my life I didn’t really care about anything except hanging with the boys, skate boarding, and video games. I brought my skate board some times and took the trucks off so it was just a wooden deck. This way, I could jump on the trampoline and she would watch me do tricks. I could do some cool things like 360 shove-it, kick flips, and all the cool grabs that I otherwise couldn’t do without the trampoline.

I hadn’t kissed a girl yet, and we had been talking about giving it a shot. I never knew how to handle things like this… i was a very awkward human. We discussed it for weeks and wanted the moment to be perfect. We decided that it would likely be best to have “These Days” by Rascal flats playing when it happened.

Well, I wish I could tell you this story is about the kiss actually happening (which eventually did with rascal flats in the back round). This story is about a moment two weeks prior, on the trampoline. I was showing her all my cool tricks and eventually we settled down to lay and chat. We laid, looking at the clouds, the trees overhead, and talked about all sorts of things. Including kissing. She straddled me. She was playing with my hair, we gazed into each other’s eyes, and her weight shifted directly to my stomach. BRRRR.

An uncontrollable loud fart just came right out of me. A red boiling face ensued. I was stunned with embarrassment. I couldn’t believe what had just happened when something washed away all desire of disappearing into oblivion. Her laughter. She laughed. I laughed. And just a couple weeks later, we shared our first kiss.