You Never Forget Your First

Ironically on the same day that I ate a piece of Dove chocolate with the wrapper message "remember all your firsts," I found one of my firsts on facebook. Jamie was my first older man, among other firsts.

I was working at a TV station is Rochester as the receptionist, he was a client. This was in a world where voice mail for everyone wasn't commonplace. They talked to me, if who they needed wasn't there, they talked to me some more and I took a message, wrote it on my pink pad, and schmoozed with them.

I was good at my job. I recognized all their voices, knew who their AE was, could make small talk. Jamie was flirtatious. And in his early 30s. To someone right out of college, he was more than exciting.

We had a three or four-month fling. And I can't even remember how or why it ended. Maybe he moved away? Maybe I met someone else? I don't remember.

I remember our first kiss....on the roof of the TV station.

I remember the first late night in his office...I'll leave it at that.

And I remember the smell of his cologne...Safari by Ralph Lauren (it was the early '90s after all).

And yesterday, there he was the friend of someone who had just friended me. I clicked "Add as Friend" and added the message "Hi, remember me?"

It was sweet that he responded, "how could I forget?"

We've played the catch-up game, back and forth with a few emails, and now that he's back in Rochester (he had moved to Florida, and that's why things ended?), he would take a ride to Ithaca sometime soon and buy me a drink.

It would be nice to see him. As an adult. Because I wasn't when we were together. Not really. I was 22 or 23, at best, playing an adult game of a relationship. I had so much ahead of me. So much living to do, so much exploring to do, so much to experience.

And looking back now, I'm so glad that I didn't take what we had seriously. That I just had fun with it. We were in such different places, that it would have been ridiculous to start anything more.

He had already been through his 20s -- and all that that brings -- it was still ahead of me like a long and mysterious path. My 20s, and hallelujah, my early 30s, when I really started to experience and explore and have fun.

And so now, here we are 15 years later, and it will be so nice to see where that long and mysterious path has brought each of us, and how it has brought us back into each other's lives.