I remember as a kid my father was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri and we used to go to this little country church near Waynesville. We used to have drive on this little dirt road to get to it and sometimes at night I would feel a little scared, but then I thought “we’re going to God’s house, there shouldn’t be anything to be afraid of” and there wasn’t. I remember the pastor of the churched lived in a trailer house next to the church itself and he had a son and daughter. I think the daughter’s name was Donna and she used to play the piano on Sundays, but I can’t remember the son’s name. The thing I liked best about this church was that we used to have potlucks and invite other “sister” churches to them.

One night after church we had a taffy pull and I couldn’t wait for the service to end because I’d never pulled taffy, but I had eaten it and in my mind there couldn’t be anything better than pulling taffy and then eating it. I remember after the service that night I ran down the steps to the basement of the church where the taffy pull was to take place. I jumped down the last three steps, stopped, and just stood there transfixed by the most beautiful gill I had ever seen in my entire life. All my life I had never seen a woman like her. She was the exotic older woman from the big city and I was the naïve military brat who had lived most of his life on some sort of military base. She saw me and she smiled and for a ten year old who just started to believe that not all girls were disgusting, I felt a strange feeling wash over me.

One of the older youth members called me over to the long, butcher paper covered table where the taffy was going to be pulled. He had me flour my hands so the taffy wouldn’t stick to them and then we were paired up with the members of the sister church who stood on the opposite side of the table. The pretty dark haired girl quickly stood opposite me and that’s when I knew that she didn’t think I was disgusting either, but why would she? She was older. She was a mature twelve year old.

The recipe that they used for the taffy somehow didn’t turn out right. Instead of something that we could pull we all ended up with slimy goop.

“this looks like boogers” I said as I added food coloring to make mine and the dark haired girl’s slime turn green. I held it up to my nose and let it drip back down to the table.

“That’s nasty” one of the other girls at our table said.

The dark haired girl just laughed as I pretended to sneeze and flung some of the green slime on her hand. She laughed but didn’t really say anything. I could tell she was thinking about something. She was up to something, but I didn‘t know what. Finally the look on her face changed and I’m sure that inside she rebelled against twelve years of good Christian values and manners. She looked around to make sure her older sister or her parents weren’t looking and when she saw that they weren’t she reached her slimy hand across the table and put a handful of green slime across my left cheek.

“Oh, it’s on now” I said as I raced around the table with a handful of the failed taffy. I was going to put it in her long brown hair, but I never got the chance. The pastor of the church stopped me. I ran into him like running into a brick wall.

“Where are you going in such a hurry young man?” He asked.

“I was going to wash my hands.” I lied to the pastor. I’d been in enough churches and heard enough sermons to know that I’m not supposed to lie or I would go directly to Hell. You just don‘t lie, especially not in church because that was God’s house and He doesn‘t like it when you tell lies in his house. I thought about that and realized that technically we weren’t in the church, we were in the basement and I had not heard anything about lying in God’s basement. I didn’t think the rules were as strict when you were in the basement.

The pastor looked at me with a look that told me he didn’t really believe me, but he let it go. “Ok, go wash your hands and we’ll just forget about the taffy pull and go to the potluck dinner.”

“Yes sir” I saluted. I was a military brat after all and saluting was just a way of life for me. I had forgotten that I had the yellow slime on my hands and got it on my forehead and hair when I saluted. I figured that was God’s way of telling me that I shouldn’t lie in His basement either.

I went into the restroom to wash my hands and face. I looked in the mirror and did the whole De Niro Taxi Driver bit - only I didn’t know who De Niro was nor had I seen the movie. I thought it was something my older cousin made up because I saw him doing it in front of a mirror once. I looked at myself in the mirror and as water dripped from my wet hair I paraphrased the lines, “Are you talkin’ to me? I said, are you talkin’ to me? You must be talkin’ to me ‘cause I don’t see anyone else standing here.” I drew a pretend gun and shot the mirror image. “That’s what you get for talkin’ to me. Nobody talks to me unless you’re my mama and you ain’t my mama.” I dried my hands, face, and my hair, which I had to wet to get the slimy candy out of it - “that’s what I get for saluting a civilian,” I thought.

“hey” the dark haired girl’s voice startled me as I walked out of the restroom. She had been waiting for me and I thought that was sort of cool and creepy at the same time.

“Are you talking to me?” I looked around and didn’t see anyone else standing there, so I knew she was talking to me.

“Yeah” she smiled. “Here” she said pressing a small piece of paper into my hand. “This is my address. Write me and I’ll write you back. We’ll be pen-pals, but you have to write me first because my dad doesn’t let me write to anyone first.”

I took the paper and simply said, “ok.” and then she leaned over to me and kissed me quickly before she ran off to join her family as they got ready to leave.

It wasn’t my first kiss from someone that was not related to me, but it was the first kiss I ever got from someone other than my mother that didn’t make me want to throw up.

I looked at the paper, smiled, and then put it in my shirt pocket. I would write her later that night and that would be the first step in a long friendship that continues to this day.