When I was seventeen, I fell head over heels in love with a boy I went to high school with. He wasn’t the most popular boy in school, or the smartest, or the most athletic, or even the wealthiest. But he was the funniest. He used to make me laugh so much my whole body would ache, and I would have to beg him to stop. Even as I write this, fifteen years later, I still have fond memories of that boy, and I am smiling right now thinking about him and the way he used to make me laugh. Of course, at that age, my parents didn’t agree with anything I did, and hanging around with this boy was no exception.
I remember the first time my dad dropped me off at his house. Of course, my dad was very reluctant to let me even go to a young boy’s house alone, but I was seventeen and there wasn’t much he could do about it—apart from giving me one hundred lectures on the dangers of adolescent boys.
As we drove up to the boy’s house on a council estate in the UK, my father eyed the area with caution and asked me, ‘What in the hell do you see in this boy anyway?’
I answered very honestly with, ‘He makes me laugh, Dad.’
My dad responded instantaneously with, ‘Yes, well, so does a f**king clown.’
One year later, after a horrible breakup and what I thought was the end of the world, I had sex with the boy’s brother, and that was the end of that. After that experience, I decided my dad was right: my next boyfriend should not resemble a clown.
‘Never look back. If Cinderella had stopped to pick up her shoe she may have not become a princess.’ — Unknown.