"You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone."

When I was a kid, I liked being in school on dark, snowy days like today. The lights always seemed to make the room feel cozy, and the sound of the muffled wheels was so soothing that everyone seemed to speak in hushed tones, not wanting to spoil the mood. We'd stay inside during recess, and the nun, Sister Raymond, would allow us to walk around the room after lunch to talk with our friends. Girls talked to girls and boys talked to boys. That was the way it was back then.

It wasn't until around the seventh grade that boys could muster enough courage to speak publicly with a girl, and even then it was mostly teasing, the first step into the mysteries of a female-male relationship. In the eighth grade the first of our couples emerged, and the rest of us boiled over with curiosity and a bit of jealousy. We asked for and got all the details, it being just too big to be kept secret. Besides, being the first girl to be in a couple was too huge not to flaunt. She told us, with the voice of experience, about handholding and kissing. We were floored.

But within a short time awe was replaced by ordinary as couple after couple began to emerge. The floodgates of adolescence had been opened by one boy brave enough to ask one girl to the movies who was brave enough to say yes.

I would never want to relive those years, I am still traumatized by both the catholic school era of my life as well as the early exploration of relationships with girls.