[ Kissy Kissy ]
When I was just a nipper there
were two girls that lived in my street. One of these I kissed and the other
I bonked on the head. We used to wander around the lane at the back of
our houses and act out our favourite episodes from "The Samurai". I took
all the meaty roles because, at five years old, I was more mature than
the others and could obviously understand the human condition to a finer
degree. Horrifyingly to me, my skills as an actor faded as I grew up -
what a loss to stage and screen it has turned out to be.
The girl down the road was called
Vicki. She had lustrous blonde hair, a pert turned up nose and a lovely
smile. One day she was going home after another tiring day of jumping backwards
into trees and yelling out 'Shintaro'. I knew that she liked me and I'm
fairly certain that I loved her in my own little kids way and so I decided
to give her a kiss. I took her out to the front yard where the traffic
continued to rumble heavily, made sure that no-one was looking (ofcourse,
my Mum saw it all) and then gave her a sloppy wet kiss on the lips. It
was a terribly exciting moment for me even though I didn't really know
why but she just sort of looked up in a funny way and giggled. I made her
promise not to tell anyone - a secret at last! - and then rushed inside
to replay the 'action' all over again. This was our one and only kiss for
some reason and by the time I was a teen I didn't even notice her any more.
The girl who lived next door
was called Margaret. She had lank brown hair, a long, bookish nose and
a lovely smile. A few years after we'd given up on play-acting there still
wasn't much to do in the area. So I decided to swing a large plunger around
and around and around and then let it fly through the air. Oh Joy! (I should
note for no reason at all that this plunger was made by my Dad and, as
such, had a fairly rough hewn quality about it - it worked perfectly well
but it would never win a design award, that's for sure). I started the
swinging action - not unlike an Olympic hammer thrower - but Margaret wanted
to play as well. I told her to go into the shed and peek out from the doorway
- this was a very dangerous operation indeed. She hid away and I started
again. At my moment of most giddiness I let the plunger go and it flew
through the air, oh so gracefully, right towards the shed and hit my stunned
next door neighbour directly on the forehead. She started to scream and
so did I - there went my dreams of glory on track and field - and I rushed
over to see what the real damage was. An enourmous egg shaped lump had
formed above her left eye. There was obvoiusly no way to keep this one
a secret. We never played again and a kiss definitely wasn't on the cards
either.
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