By Rachel Belle

Listen to Feature: Tales of the First Kiss

Some people love Valentine’s Day. Others label it a Hallmark Holiday or consider it a yearly reminder of their single status. Either way, I think most of us remember our first kiss, no matter how embarrassing, disgusting, romantic or sweet it was.

KIRO FM anchor, Jessica Gottesman, is still traumatized by her first smooch at age 13, from a boy named Jeff.

“It was the grossest, mouth open, French-est, dirtiest kiss and I didn’t know what was happening! It was just the worst and he came at me with these big teeth. I felt nauseated immediately after. It’s traumatic to this day! I missed school the next day because I was actually sick to my stomach. I didn’t actually throw up, but even now, thinking about it, I feel like I want to throw up.”

There seems to be a lot of first kiss heartbreak in the KIRO newsroom, and Luke Burbank is no stranger to that heartbreak.

“It was at a Christian ice skating night. I was in 8th grade and I had this girlfriend, she was in 7th grade. We’re sitting along the sideline of the ice rink and on my left side is this girl, and on my right side is my buddy who I call “The Mummy,” and this other kid. They’re telling me ‘You should kiss her! You should kiss her!’ I have my arm around her and I finally lean in, and I give her this kiss, and when my lips made contact with her lips, it was like someone had set off a thousand helium balloons in my brain. I felt like my head was actually detaching from my body. I said to her ‘That was the first kiss I’ve ever given someone.’ She was from public school, she had transferred to this Christian school, and she looked at me so confused and then, ‘Aw, that’s so sweet. That’s the first time you ever kissed anyone…’ As if she’d made out with an entire football team just the night before.

“What I found out later was, she was cheating on me with my friend, The Mummy, the whole time! And they were going to, like, third base!”

John Curley was 12 years old when his crush Lisa, and two of their friends, went out to the woods behind Philadelphia Country Club.

“We all sat on rocks and we played Spin the Bottle, and we played until it landed on the person that we wanted. I was so taken with her that every couple hours I kept coming back to her and saying ‘Want to go back to the woods? Want to go back to the woods?’ Later on that evening she broke up with me because I kept asking her to go back to the woods in front of people.”

KIRO anchor Dan Mitchinson has the sweetest story of the bunch, but even his is tainted with awkwardness.

“It was my freshman year in college and I was taking a badminton class and was really attracted to this girl who was on my team. I didn’t have the guts to ask her out. So one day, when I was going to hit the shuttlecock, I ended up pounding her full force on the top of the head. She literally blacked out and as she was coming around, I said ‘Are you okay? Are you okay? I know this probably isn’t a very good time to ask, but would you like to go out? I could sort of apologize for conking you out that way.’ That lead to our first date at the beach and that lead to out first kiss. Yes, I know I was a little bit of a late bloomer, but it was good. Her name was Joy and it was.”

Who is Rachel Belle?