A Snug Sip Of Joy - That Didn't Quite Fit

 
I remember first being drawn to a girl at the age of 10. I was sitting in my grade school classroom with my third grade musings, feigning attention at the teacher speaking before the bell sounded. It was the first day of school, and I was in my prim and proper, wearing clothes so stiff and shiny new that bending would have been considered a chore when she walked into the room... the flowing blond of her hair was caught in the wind of the shutting door, and I knew something was different. I felt a need to indulge, to ask, to ingratiate myself with her every need.

She was oblivious for the first few weeks, of course. Even when the teacher's assigned seating chart pulled off, what could only be coined, a divine intervention and sat us directly next to each other. Her name was Kim, she liked to chew on her pencils, and when she raised her hand to answer questions she did so with vigor and authority (even at that age, I was drawn to strong women). I did every conceivable thing to garner that girl's attention over the next two weeks, I sang in class, told jokes, acted out (all to the teacher's dismay, I might add)... and in the end it was a playground game of tag, amongst several of us, that inspired our getting to know each other. She was tagged by one of the older boys and skinned her knee on the asphalt. She sat there, examining her bloodied appendage, when I reached my hand out to lift her back up she beamed the widest smile back at me. She took my hand and, very lightly... so as not to rely too much on it, pulled herself up.

For the next 3 days, we were inseparable. We ate together at lunch, I sat with her and all her friends, we worked on our school projects together during class... it was perfect... or it was perfect until the first time we truly held hands. Now it took about three days for me to work up the courage to take her by the hand. That's how things were done back in those days. Holding hands in early grade school was like kissing, it was as intimate as one could be while still remaining under the cloak of adolescent innocence. When I held her hand in mine I noticed something, though. She liked to tuck her last two fingers together so that my ring and pinky fingers were left out on a lurch by themselves with no support. So I readjusted, re-interlaced our fingers, and looked up to see that her eyes had tightly clinched at this maneuvering as she quickly reasserted her original hold.

That was the moment I remember thinking "this wouldn't work" because the way she held hands was different. It was also the moment where my first relationship ended as she had also taken great insult to the fact that I didn't want to hold hands like she did, and that was that. I wasn't all that upset over the ending of the relations. I was more befuddled with how the girl wanted to hold hands. It was a greater metaphor for how people, sometimes, just don't fit. Of course, this was grade school and while our split was mutual, she sounded off on it first, and in those formative years that meant she got the credit for doing it. C'est la vie...