PUCKER UP
by Kiley Walsh

There’s nothing you can do to prepare for the feeling of being kissed. Don’t kiss your hand or look in the mirror puckering your lips. You just can’t physically prepare, but you can be ready and smart. It’s going to be awkward because it’s totally different. No one has ever gone to your face—eyes in front of eyes, nose touching nose—and tried to kiss you. Sure, parents and relatives have pecked you on the cheek countless times by now, but it’s not the same feeling of closeness.

Therefore, if the other person is used to kissing, let him or her do all the work. Seriously, if you have never kissed someone, do not try and take control of this extremely uncomfortable situation. And boys, it would be more demeaning of your masculinity to screw up kissing her chin than to let her kiss you first.

For girls, you can’t have expectations. You’ve grown up with movies that make you think first kisses should be in front of great, colorful fountains that spit hearts above your heads. Or it should be pouring rain and he desperately runs to your house when he’s forbidden, making your first kiss dangerous and flooded with endorphins.

It’s not going to be like that.

And if it is, you win.

But if you’re in junior high and beginning to see boys as more than germs (later you’ll realize they still are gross), it is most likely known through text or friends that a kiss is going down after school on a Friday at the high school football game. Just absorb the cheesiness of that whole situation. You’re sporting the one sweatshirt you own of your future high school and your parents are directly above you in the bleachers. How can you beat this romance? But when you really like someone, the humor of it all is actually pretty fun.

Now, it’s going to be hard, but don’t create a group of girls that has one messenger being sent to a group of boys where your future-first-kiss hunk is standing.

“Johnny says if you go over there, he’ll kiss you.”

“Well, if Johnny wants to kiss me, he can come here.”

It’s all obnoxious and comes off more like a business deal, but you only have one first kiss. We can all agree that finally facing that person is terrifying, but you’ve got to relax and stop shaking. When you’re near his face, your mouth might even quiver. You are okay! Remember that. People kiss all the time. (You’ll see in high school—unfortunately, passing period make-out sessions are real.)

Your first kiss is weird, but it won’t even be that incredible. Also, being in a public place, the kiss isn’t going to last longer than one or two seconds. But do not be fooled. Regardless of this quickness, you will remember it all—the way your arms were deep in your front pocket and how awkwardly they pressed against him. You’ll remember his definite lack of chapstick, but how warm another pair of lips felt.

But once you kiss him, try and play cool. Don’t immediately walk away. Don’t refuse to look at him until late that night when you text him about how amazing the kiss was. At the same time, don’t confess your love to him on the spot. Don’t propose the name for your third daughter together. And when you finally walk back to your friends and they are grabbing your hands, pulling you into a tight circle to get all the details about how to kiss a boy, play it cool.

Because you, my friend, just got your first kiss.