Halloween - Amanda, 36

For most of my childhood, my brother and I didn't Trick-or-Treat for religious reasons, and so I missed some of the door-to-door action.  We still got candy at the local church party, and we wore costumes of Biblical origin, so I gather the spirit of the holiday was somewhat the same. 

That rather stopped when I turned thirteen or so, and the allure of trick-or-treating had dulled somewhat under the onslaught of teenage hormones.

And then I turned fifteen and met Tom.  He was the trifecta of all early teen girl crushes--brooding, mysterious, and a little bad.  Under the loosening of the parental yoke, I latched onto Tom's strange maleness, venturing out after dark, traipsing into abandoned places.  The decision to trick-or-treat was a pretense to meet Tom at night, but I dressed up anyway and marched from door to door with a pillowcase, biding my time until Tom was free to meet behind the elementary school.

I don't know what we had been doing on all our previous assignations, roaming suburb streets and picking (? couldn't read the writing exactly, but I think that's what you meant.  Looks like "pching") about the woods, but this night saw us sitting on a brick wall.  Who knew how long we sat, what we said; really, early dating is all a blur of nothingness.  But at the end, when I got up to go home, Tom grabbed my hands and asked, "Can I kiss you?"

As far as awkward kisses went, it was up there pretty high.  I don't know how people learn to kiss--even if you copy television and movie kisses, you can never be sure it's right.  Your stomach is a little flippy, and you're filled with that feeling that finally you're doing something you've been working towards, something inevitable.  It means something.

After that kiss, we said goodnight, and I tripped home, elation, kissy face, blah, blah, blah, laden with candy.

I would date Tom for two more months before I moved away, and then I saw him once more when I was in college.  One afternoon we met for coffee and tried to reconnect, but it wasn't, it never is, the same. I was a better kisser now, and every time our mouths connected, I was reminded of that first awkward Halloween kiss.

It had to have been special, right?  The last time I ever trick-or-treated, I got not just candy, but a first kiss and my first boyfriend all in one, slamming the door to the house and starting down a whole new path that seemed to appear as if from nothing at all.