First Time for Some Things

25 questions test whether or not there really is a first time for everything:

1. Who was your FIRST prom date?
I didn't go. I went to an all-boys Catholic high school, and while there was a girl I'd left behind in middle school that I had a crush on, I had no idea whether she would be single or even remember me if I called her out of the blue after four years. I didn't have the best of reputations in my old public school either, kind of an odd mix between the biggest nerd in town and the village idiot.

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?
I recently reconnected online with the girl I was going to “marry” when I was five years old, but I wouldn't say that was love or that I knew what love was at that age. I don't speak to any of the crushes I had growing up, many of which I barely spoke with when I had the opportunity. I guess my first real love would have been when I was in a relationship and the feeling was, for a few years, mutual. I haven't spoken to her in a very long time.

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?
I had a few Heinekens at a college Halloween party, a few days shy of my 21st birthday. It resulted in some embarrassing, uninhibited dancing, so God help me if any of the kids had cameras that day.

4. What was your FIRST job?
When I was 10 years old my mom used to send me down to the end of our block with a little red wagon full of her plants to sell. In high school I started making money playing in various marching bands. My first official paycheck came a few years later in college working for a house painting company over one Summer. I also worked as a gas station attendant over another Summer. My first “real” job after college was at a small design book publisher that hired me after my internship there in my Senior year.

5. What was your FIRST car?
I'll never forget my dad's old ‘81 maroon Monte Carlo, which originally belonged to my music teacher. That thing was a TANK and got me back and forth to college for four years, and to various adventures around Long Island for another four before the girl I was seeing at the time moved to Massachusetts and I needed something newer with better gas mileage. I still miss that big guidomobile.

6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?
No one. The majority of my incoming correspondence comes through e-mail and other forms of online communication. The only time I'll get a text is if someone is trying to reach me from a noisy place, like a bar, concert, or movie theater.

7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?
My cat Chirp, because he was sitting on my chest staring at me until I woke up from the difficulty breathing. Apparently it was time to get up and feed him. I'm just glad we don't own a mastiff.

8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?
I want to say Mrs. Gibbons, but I think she was third grade. Maybe Mrs. Seid? I can remember my Kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Giardina. Those early years in school are somewhat of a blur now.

9. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?
I traveled with my college pep band to play for our team at a basketball game in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?
I don't know that I ever really had a true best friend. There was one kid I called my best friend in 2nd grade but we lost touch over a years. The guy I called my best friend in middle school at one point took me aside and specifically asked me to stop telling people we were best friends because we weren't. For a time I considered my ex-girlfriend my best friend, but that feeling was clearly as unrequited as my love for her. Honestly, outside of a couple in a relationship, I don't believe there's such a thing as a “best” friend. I have people I consider very good friends, and certainly people I trust more than others and confide in, but I don't know that anyone has ever considered me a best friend. Like love, that kind of connection qualifies only when mutual.

11. Where was your FIRST sleep over?
The first time I stayed anywhere away from home overnight was when I went camping in Virginia with some of my friends in college.

12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?
My dad.

13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?
I was an usher at Rey's wedding.

14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?
I flossed in an attempt to “cram” for my biannual dental exam and cleaning.

15. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?
I saw various local bands at the old Roxy Music Hall in Huntington, and once saw Biohazard there, but the first big concert I went to was a Pearl Jam performance at Randall's Island.

16. FIRST tattoo?
The closest thing I have to a tattoo is the broken tip from a sharp #2 pencil that got buried in the palm of my left hand when I carelessly reached for it in my shirt pocket on the way to a final exam in high school.

17. FIRST piercing?
I once stapled two of my fingers together when I was a kid, just to see what would happen, but I removed it pretty quickly; does that count?

18. FIRST foreign country you've been to?
Does Hoboken count? I've never been out of the United States.

19. FIRST movie you remember seeing?
The Secret of NIMH.

20. When was your FIRST detention?
In elementary school, I'd often have to stay after class and write 100 times on a sheet of looseleaf whatever it was the teacher didn't want me doing anymore, like “MCF will not talk during class” or “MCF will not climb out on a window ledge”, stuff like that. In middle school I had to write an essay on “dumpster safety” after a teacher caught me playing on or around a dumpster during recess. I mellowed out considerably by high school, and avoided their dreaded system of color coded demerit slips of green or gray. I once got a pink colored slip for forgetting to do my French homework, but there were no demerits attached; I just had to stay a half hour after school to make up the assignment. I think that was the only time I ever had to stay after school for disciplinary reasons.

21. What was the FIRST state you lived in?
New York.

22. Who was your FIRST roommate?
I've never had a roommate, unless parents count but parents are the first people most of us live with first. I once stayed with Rey for a week after he had some mysterious seizures and wasn't allowed to drive for a few months.

23. If you had one wish. What would it be?
The joke answer would be Steve Martin's wish about the children singing, and the $30 million dollars, etc. The semiserious answer would of course be “infinite wishes”. The honest answer would be “to be better”.

24. What is something you would learn if you had the chance?
How to speak Italian, or how to use Dreamweaver.

25. Who do you think will be the next person to post this?
It will either be Kev Bayer on his blog or B13 in my comments section.