Love and learning at the cottage.

"My hands are cold" she said to me, that starry night, as we sat on the hill beside the lake.

"Hmm, maybe you should sit on them or put them in your pockets even" was my very practical and helpful reply.

Hmm....maybe if I wasn't such a meathead and didn't miss this obvious invite to hold her hand, I might have gotten somewhere with this young lady. Actually, I did finally get somewhere with her, but it was due to a game of truth or dare that she and her friend set up rather than any actual smart moves on my part.

The girl in question we'll call "S". That's because "S" is the first letter of her name, and not because she has weirdo hippies for parents that actually just called her "S". I met her a few years prior to the summer we kissed, actually while playing basketball with my brother and cousin. This seemed to be the best way to meet chicks that I ever hit on. So after our intial meeting, my brother and I started to hang out with "S" and her various friends pretty much any chance we got out at my parent's cottage. We'd play cards, go for walks, play a bit of basketball, mostly just have good clean fun. About the worst kind of trouble we ever got into was staying out past curfew. Wow....pretty hardcore.

I always thought "S" was pretty cute, but due to my shyness, and eventually just due to not wanting to make our friendship awkward, I never moved on it. I guess the summer of '95 she finally got tired of waiting for me and decided to make the move. It started out with her and I hanging out just the two of us a lot more often. Previously, my brother would always be along as well, but this summer it seemed it was often just the two of us.

So yeah, not much happened for the longest time except I started to notice again how cute she was and I started to wish for the courage to make a move. After the fumbled chance by the lake I figured I had blown it. Luckily she persisted, and by the next weekend seemed to have a new plan. It was the last weekend of the summer I believe, and my bro had brought out his friend Paul, and "S" had brought out her friend Emma. We hung out as usual, and then ended up at another friend's place, in his tent, when someone suggested we play truth or dare.

It went through a few rounds with some embarrasing truths and the occasional silly dare, the silliest requiring Paul to kiss Emma where there was a hole in her jeans on her inner thigh. Then, the fix was in, and "S" was dared to kiss me. So we kissed. Started out hesitant but then proceeded into a pretty good one. Fairly soon after this the game dissolved and I ended up walking "S" home.

We went the long way. Holding hands the entire time, and stopping frequently for kiss breaks. I think we'd both wanted this to happen for so long, and then it finally did, we just couldn't get enough. We hung out the next day, for as long as we could until it was time for my parents to head back to Red Deer, and hers to Calgary. We wrote each other a few letters that winter, and I even visited her once and took her to a movie, but the distance was too much. Even though she only lived 150km away, I had no car and was busy with my first year at Red Deer college.

We saw each other a couple times the next summer but never recaptured the magic of those stolen moments alone together. Funny how you can take so long working your way up to something, only to have it flash past you like a bolt of lightning. That was my big lesson from "S", if you want something, you have to make your move on it. If you wait for the perfect moment, it might never come, or it might come too late, and all you'll be left with is the regret and the thoughts of what might have been.