Smooching Not What It Used To Be
“You must remember this, A kiss is still a kiss …”
Or is it? According to my eighth-graders, we old folks have been doing it all wrong.
According to me, I always kind of liked it just the way it was. The controversy began last fall as we were watching the ‘50s Hitchcock thriller, “Rear Window,” preparatory to writing our own mystery stories. The kids found the decorous kisses shared by Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly a little less than believable.
In the middle of my favorite love scene - the one where the breathtakingly beautiful Kelly drapes herself across the wheelchair-bound Stewart’s lap and they embark on some serious smooching - Sally and Angie begin to titter (laugh self-consciously from nervousness).
Benny and Ronald snigger (laugh in a disrespectful manner). Thirteen-year-old boys are like that.
The confrontation is afoot. “All right,” I growl as I punch the STOP button on the remote control. “What’s so funny?”
“That’s not kissing,” Angie giggles. “That’s a ‘peck’. Didn’t they kiss for real back then?”
“They did indeed,” I insist, “but are you suggesting because the participants aren’t going for each other’s tonsils, they don’t know their business?”
“I just don’t think it looks like any fun,” Benny says with a frown. “I like it better the way we do it now.”
“And just how is that?” I ask, knowing full well they mean the Olympic event-style kissing they’re used to seeing on cable TV.
Benny begins to redden up around the edges as he shrugs, rolls his eyes and looks to Ronald for help. Ronald pretends he’s invisible.
Lucy, our resident social analyst and arbiter, suggests Benny has never kissed a girl anyway so what does he know.
Benny says he’s kissed lots of girls and offers Lucy a list of names. “I kissed Stacy in gym last year and then I …” Realizing he’s just blown his cover, he claps his hand over his mouth, but it’s too late. A couple of the boys are hooting and calling him “Lover Boy.”
“Oh yeah, I remember that,” Bobby sneers. “She slugged you.”
Lucy just purses her lips in disgust.
But Benny’s not finished. “I kissed a senior already this year and she thought I was really cool,” he says triumphantly as though this revelation should finish any further discussion of his amorous capabilities.
Lucy mutters, “In your dreams, dog breath.”
Benny instantly deflates.
“We played kissing games at my birthday party,” Angie informs me, “and big mouth there wouldn’t even play. He went to my brother’s room and they messed with some stupid video game.” Her next question ages me mercilessly. “Did they play kissing games in the ‘olden’ days when you were a kid?”
Instantly my memory slides back to Jack Witcher’s 12th birthday party. “We’re going to play Post Office,” he confided as he handed out each invitation. “My mom said we could.”
None of us girls had ever been to a party with kissing games before, so we were intrigued but not thrilled. In fact, we were nervous.
Nancy and Janet said flat out they would not play. Sally thought it might be fun if she got to kiss Frank and the thought of kissing anybody at all set my skinny knees a-knocking.
But it all worked out. Only two boys showed up at Jack’s party - Jack and his friend James. When the other boys found out there would be kissing games, they avoided Jack’s house like the plague.
Spin the Bottle with 12 girls and Jack (Jim hid out in the kitchen with Jack’s mom) was less than a memorable experience. We girls agreed that Jack was fatally flawed - he kissed wet! Ugh!
Back to the future.
Any explanation to my students of the distinct pleasures of a chaste kiss would flounder in the multi-generation gap between them and me, so I’ll just smile and hope I can make them wonder what I know that they don’t. “… The world will always welcome lovers, As time goes by …”
xxxx