Firsts

You never really do forget The First, do you? The First of anything. Be it The First in a flexible sense, as in the earliest of whatever than you can recall, or be it the actual original, however far back that was. 

I'm not talking about anything in particular. There are many firsts. There's a first for just about everything you've ever done, even breathing and blinking and eating, although that spans back to about the day you were born. But there are certain defining moments in your life of which, though they may occur multiple times, you will never let go of the first. It will always be with you, an echo of times now long past, and a memory of when you were younger; more naive; fresher to this world; and had so much yet to experience. 

• Your first BFF, although the melancholy truth is, it's not always forever. 
• Your first love, which always manages to crash and burn in a painful and possibly humiliating way
• Your first kiss
• Your first failed school assignment, which has always convinced me that the apocalypse is nigh
• Your first visit to the hospital after a wound
• Your first death in the family
• Your first fight
• Your first really big, epic, phenomenal screw-up . . . in my experience, it's not the last

There are others, probably involving matrimony and parenthood and college, but I have yet to experience those sensations. Perhaps, far into the future, I'll rustle up this blog and jot down a few lines about those joys. But those are some of the more universal firsts, aside from ones that I cower to post on the internet even under a pseudonym. Based on vocation, interest, and inclination, there are a few others that I've undergone:

• The first book you ever finish writing, which can occasionally be looked back upon with mortification and revulsion, but maybe that's just me
• The first tremendous failure in baking (They weren't chocolate chip cookies, they were lace cookies. Forget to add flour?! Nonsense!)
• Your first role model
• The first time you really, truly, maybe irrevocably disappoint someone
• Your first taste of the unattainable, in whatever field it might be
• The first subject you excel in

What are some of your big firsts? Leave me a comment! I'd love to hear that I'm not the only person who undergoes nostalgia and mentions it on the internet.