Firsts

I am a little bit late in starting with my Scintilla Project blogs, but as they say “Better late than never”.

Life is a series of firsts, but I think for a girl, the most important first would be losing her virginity.  Even if you say it isn’t important, it is still something that you will remember forever.  For the good girl that I was (and loved to be) my first time really was not what I would have expected.

Even though I am the oldest of 2 girls, my sister did the slutty, easy girl thing and I did the academic thing.  I didn’t really care about boys much, which is a good thing considering I was in a school for the arts and the majority of boys were gay and those who were not, really weren’t that interesting at all.   I also did not have the most ordinary life while I was in high school; Having my parents divorced relatively later than most, I moved in with my dad and my uncle on the farm.  I regularly  jetted off to Cape Town with my dad when he traveled on business or stayed home organising work functions they used to host on the farm.  So while most girls my age were fooling around with boys, I was playing Lady of the Manor, and I enjoyed every minute of it!

I never had this ideal of waiting to get married before having sex, but I also didn’t want to just sleep with the first guy I met.  I did have a few dates with a couple of guys that was nothing serious until the proverbial Bad Boy set his sights  on me.  And as we all know from way too many RomComs, the Good Girl simply cannot resist the Bad Boy.  Turns out to be all too true in real life with the slight difference that the Bad Boy does not suddenly grow a conscious and become hopelessly devoted to the Good Girl and live happily ever after, but I digress.

I have known Bad Boy for a couple of years as he is a close family friend.  Then one day he started coming out to the farm a lot more often, talking to me more, constantly complimenting me and just turning on that irresistible Bad Boy Charm (damn, these bastards can be so charming when they want to be and to this day I sometimes miss it). And that is how the flirtation started which brings me to my “firsts”.  Bad Boy ended up being 2 firsts for me; My first love and the first time I had sex.

One Saturday, we went to a party thrown by mutual friends of ours, we had a good time and we did drink a lot too.  When we finally drove home, he was serenading me with songs by his favourite band, Seether and he kept stopping next to the road to pick me wild flowers (it was cosmos time).  We were laughing and singing and stopping next to the road, picking flowers, kissing and having drinks under the stars.  In this way, it took us over 2 hours to make the 30 minute drive back home.  And things did not cool down when we got home, it just got steamier. And that is how this very inebriated Good Girl lost her virginity.

Thinking back over that disastrous relationship, this night is still my favourite memory out of the whole relationship and even though I have gone through stages wishing I could change the guy, today as I sit here, I actually would not like to change that night.  I think this is what closure is; accepting and owning a moment from the past.

Reverb11 Day 16 – A Community I Love

A Community I Love – Online & IRL we’re all part of a multitude of communities.  Tell us about one that moves you.

I do not easily fall in with a community, I like being the lone wolf most of the time, so I think the community that is most important to me is my family community.  During my life I have discovered that you can choose your family, and most of the time when I talk or refer to my family, we are not all related.  Sure, most of the time we drive each other crazy, we do not always conform and we drink a lot, but when times are tough, we come together and we stick together.  We have a bit of a ‘nobody insults my family, but me’ thing going and it’s quite amusing and touching to watch.

Over the last couple of days I have been thinking a lot of “family’ that I have lost and how much those people meant to me.  It’s a bit morbid for this time of the year, but this christmas is absolutely sucky any way, because we are not doing the whole family christmas yet again.  As much as I might bitch and moan about  my family, they are mine, and I miss them.

The most beautiful thing ever written

“Her father had taught her about hands.  About a dog’s paws.  Whenever her father was alone with a dog in the house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw.  This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world!  A bouquet!  Great rumours of travel!  She would pretend disgust, but the dog’s paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt.  It’s a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so’s garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen—a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.”

I love this passage from The English Patient.

I have grown up loving the smell of a dog’s paws  Cuddling up between my dog’s legs when she falls asleep;  the most comforting smell in the entire world.  I have never met anyone else who gets this, and that is why this excerpt is so powerful for me, Michael Ondaatje just explains the essence of the smell so well.

Reverb11 Day 2 – My children will do it differently

My Children Will Do it Differently - If you could choose one thing that your children will do or experience in a different way than you have, what would it be and why?

I grew up in a time where it was save to spend the day riding your bike around the neighbourhood with all your friends, we played games in the fields where we made up imaginary castles and dragons, where we were princesses and our bikes were beautiful, white horses.  We played in the rain, and made mud-cakes.  We made each other mix tapes, usually taped straight from the radio.  We had fun.  We were kids and stayed that way a hell of a lot longer than kids do nowadays.

I miss that.

Almost nobody had computers and there was no such thing as cellphones.  We didn’t worry about fashion, or having the latest gadgets; in stead we had picnics in the garden or the park, we used to lie on the grass and look at the clouds, played cards and board games.  We baked cookies.  We used to go to the library.  The days were endless.

I do not want kids, but I guess if I did want to I would let my kids participate in more things than I did;  From ballet to hip-hop, playing music, debate team, choir, sports, everything.  They should experience everything and decide for themselves what they enjoy and what they don’t like.  I wouldn’t want them to look back when they are older, wishing they had the opportunity to experience something