[“Oh, yes, I remember it well.” -Maurice Chevalier]

I do remember it. How often does a boy get his first kiss (and not from Mom) on an afternoon, after a remedial math class taught by a nun?
My guess is that it’s not that often. However, that ‘kiss’ has to happen somewhere, sometime in a young life. It might as well be after the nun let us out for the afternoon, convinced she had made math clear in our minds, and not knowing that three of us were heading across the Susquehanna River bridge. My girlfriend (who shall remain nameless) and her friend needed walking home. After all, it was a bright sunny (September?) day and they needed to be seen safely home to my girlfriend’s friend’s home in South Owego.
I was the man to do the manly thing and walk them home,
The events that follow lasted, to me, an hour. In reality, it was all over in a few minutes.
But those minutes can and do have echoes that are heard for years to come.
My girlfriend’s friend (I’ll call her Cassandra) had a certain part to play that afternoon. But, only she knew that part. I didn’t. I wasn’t expecting what happened next.
Cassie ran and hid behind the station. I recall there was no whistle, no Mr. Conductor, no Ticketmaster, no Pullman. It was just the three of us on the platform.
But, then there was only two. My girlfriend and me.
I think she sensed my intention because she ran off a short distance and stood in an empty doorway.
She looked at me. In a nanosecond, I grew up a little for I totally comprehended what she wanted…and what I had been desperate for for about three years.
I walked over to her and took her shoulders in my hands.

Well, something has to be left to the imagination.