Getting your first kiss is supposed to be an important rite of passage in a teenage life. Anyone could acknowledge that it is, in fact, rather unimportant, but that doesn’t make it any less desirable. Everyone wants to get it; wants to be able to say that they have had this experience, this event, this amazing, fantastic, wondrous kiss.

Except it isn’t all that amazing once it actually happens, is it? No, a quick peck, feeling cold, nervous, tense lips quickly touch your own, and then it’s over. Still, you can chart it down in your own personal memory book, add it to your resume: “Was kissed.”

People can cheat, obviously. They can have it in pre-school when it wasn’t any compliment, just a way to pass the time before lessons began again, and then say that they have, indeed, experienced It. But when you’re older? That’s when it really counts. That’s when it means something. It means that this person likes you, and wants to kiss you, and thinks you’re pretty and cute and beautiful enough to kiss. Because that’s another reason to have it happen; for reassurance that you are, indeed, beautiful, and wanted.

The guy doesn’t matter. It could be anyone, anywhere, anytime – so long as it happens. Doesn’t matter if he likes football, hates lacrosse, thinks blondes are better than brunettes... not important. All that matters is that it happened, and if you never see this guy again, you wouldn’t shed a tear. Just toss the memory into your photo album and be done with him forever.

Maybe your first kiss is on your bucket list – and that’s where it should be. But kissing just to feel pretty? Just to feel wanted?

But what it boils down to, really, is having that snapshot of your life, of being able to say that you were kissed, that you have definitely now have this on your time line. That you now have in your possession this kiss, this pointless nothingness that doesn’t matter. You can cherish this kiss that means so little, but ask yourself this; who decided that this was important? Who decided that a first kiss was something to be gotten over with, not something to savor, to hold out on? That a first kiss was something to hold over other’s heads, to feel superior, to even use as an arsenal when someone is mean: “Well, I was kissed, so who cares?”

No, those who haven’t been kissed yet, those who rush into it quickly to make sure that they become normal – those are the poor victims that this phenomenon has created. So in conclusion, I pray that you, in reading this, have thought it over more carefully, and hopefully have realized that a first kiss does not define you. It cannot put a label on you, and it does not certainly not state who you are. And so I beseech you to resist when you feel abnormal, when you feel different from everyone else. You are not, though you may think so. And just remember – though your future is uncertain, you can know one thing for sure; a first kiss, if done wrong, will quickly fade into oblivion, and you will have only yourself to blame.