swinging love

to be honest, i think i've been boy crazy since birth. my first love, however, came when i was in kindergarten. (does that sound incredibly young to anyone else?) anyway, i remember him well, but i can't even tell you his last name...or even how to spell his first name. what i do remember is gazing at him and smiling back at him as we swung next to each other on the playground.

we were living in south florida at the time and i attended a parochial school where my mom taught gym class. as part of our uniform, we girls donned blue plaid jumpers with white collared shirts each day. i usually wore my favorite shoes, pink kangaROOs. you know the kind - with the pouch on the side big enough to stuff a nickel in? anyway, the boy was a grade ahead of me so i was not able to adore him during class time. the few precious moments we had together were swinging on the swings during recess.

isn't that funny? i don't remember his last name. i don't remember much of anything about him except for the fact that he was darker complected, had dark black hair, and swung next to me at recess. he wore the standard uniform for our school - a white collared shirt and navy blue pants and, i'm sure he wore tennis shoes to complete the look. but, something about that boy struck me and i still remember him today.

if i had to guess, i would assume the boy is in prison for drug trafficking or shuttling immigrants into the country. south florida is not an easy (or nice) place to grow up which is why we moved to small town, indiana. anyway, i hope that better things have happened for the boy, and maybe somewhere he's blogging about his first love - a little girl with bleached blonde hair, swinging next to him on the playground, wearing her blue plaid jumper and rockin' pink ROOs.