I was 15 when I think I knew what love was
I was with my then best friend/later first L-O-V-E at my parents lake. There was a whole group of us, I think 6 of my guy friends and me. My parents are rad and have always been rad and allowed me to have one sleep over with all my guy friends at the lake. We would build camp fires, try to play badmitten on a hill (impossible) and swim with water shoes on.
I didn’t know what love was, I mean christ I don’t even know what it is now, I probably had a better idea back then than now, anyways…. I didn’t know what love was but I knew that I cared a lot for my group of guy friends. We were pretty tight through out high school. Calling our selves “The Fellowship” cause that was completely not cool back then either. But I was always had a special spot for Mike. We were always secretly in love with each other, but jesus… I was 15. Who has time to figure out what those crazy butterflies really mean? Pass the mega gulp please. Lets ruin the mall.
I mean, back to the story. Right we were all at the lake. Swimming around, trying to pull Bert’s shorts off under water while he wasn’t looking and generally being teens in the middle of the summer and with out a care in the world.
I had just gotten these cheap water goggles with the idea what I with this new device I could catch sun fish with my bare hands. I don’t even think I saw a fish with those goggles. They suctioned cuped to my face and left this really ridiculous imprint on my face that looked like the infinity sign.
I swam up to Mike while he was wading with the sea weed. I think I knew I was slowly falling in kiddy love with him. Already in my little girl mind I was thinking about all the fun things we could do together in the future, none of them involved sex, marriage or kissing…. more like walking to the duck pond and driving around in my car while listening to Barenaked Ladies, but still… I saw a future with him in one way or another.
While I swam up to him underwater with my dollar store goggles, I noticed that his hands had become shriveled and wrinkled in the water. Like an old man. I had a sudden feeling of fear, admiration and longings. I found out years later that this was a feeling of love. More or less. I was staring at a young boy’s hands that aged before my eyes and I started to think of death, growing old. Growing old with someone. In the lake’s murky darkness the white of his hands sent me into my first realization that nothing last. I knew about death in an obscure way. But that was the first time that I realized that I one day will grow old and die, and some day all of my friends splashing and diving off the dock will die some day and this one in front of me, will too die someday. In a even more terrifying thought I realized that when they do, there is a very likely chance that I may not know about it right away. We won’t be close kids playing truth or truth. We will or may be strangers.
It wasn’t for a few laters later that Mike and I finally kissed, and even a year or so after that that we dated. By then I was in college. But that moment of thought that only lasted a millisecond 3 years before… just a flash. But for a moment in the sea weed and rocks of a man made lake, I felt love and death all at the same time.
I was more sure of that feeling back then than I am now. Amazing what 10 years of experience, lack and doubt can do to a child’s mind that was so a head of its time.
