So I’ve been watching my stats recently, internet. Don’t you think I haven’t been.

These are the top ten posts of all time out of the last 82 posts (this is post 83, can you believe it?) along with their page views:

The WORSER worst date I’ve ever been on. 115
The true story of the first night I ever went out drinking, part 1. 103
Women’s Strength Training Anatomy – a review. 93
The worst meal I’ve ever had. 80
Friend dating. 72
Justin Bieber is not a douchebag. 68
Here goes nothing. 67
The true story of the worst date I’ve ever been on. 66
Grad school in memes. 65
My cat’s on Prozac. 64

Look at this list, internet. A lot of worsts. Dating. Drinking. Debauchery. And of course, memes and cats.

Predictable.

I figured today, given your preferences, I’d do a crowd-pleasing post about The Worst Kiss I’ve Ever Experienced. It’s a short but bittersweet tale.

Our story today takes place in a little pseudo-town called Govy (Government Camp). On Wikipedia Govy is referred to as an unincorporated community, whatever that means. It’s essentially a slap-dash ski town that has three or four different ski camps, 6 or 7 different demo shops, a pizza place, an ice cream shop, and a diner. That’s essentially it. If they have police or a fire department, you’d never know it (unless you were involved in a firecracker war with the dishwashers who worked at the Huckleberry in diner, but that’s a different story for a different time).

I went to a ski camp there in the summer of ’05 called MHSSC. It was a ski/ snowboard training program run off of the nearly mountain Mt. Hood (Fun fact- the hotel that The Shining was filmed in, the Timberline Lodge, is located at the base of this mountain. Awesome). It was a two week program where you got to train during the mornings on the glacier until the snow started to melt around noon, and then in the afternoons we got into plenty of debauchery and craziness and shenanigans like surfing and hiking and white water rafting and whatnot.

I was 15. I had, in fact, kissed some people. I had even french-kissed someone. I had bypassed the cootie contamination issue, but I was by no means experienced in the ways of love. Coming off of my first year in high school, I’d already fancied myself old and wise and had had my heart broken by my boyfriend of 37 seconds (it was meant to be, but alas, someone else’s boobs came in before mine did).

I was, however, not ready for the whirlwind of hormones that awaited me at Govy.

I met Murphy MacManus the first day of camp. He was tall and Irish and had blue braces and sunburnt skin. His voice crackled like feedback on a microphone. He even had a few ginger hairs growing on his scrawny torso. I was in love (probably).

Our whirlwind romance lasted an entire 3 days, which in summer camp time, is practically a year. He even let me share his headphones when we listened to music on his Discman on the bus. What we had was real. 

Sadly, it was not to be. We went on a date after white-water rafting one night to the Huckleberry Inn Diner. I bought us a huckleberry milkshake to share and a piece of huckleberry pie. To this day that pie ranks on my top five pies of all time (piemakers 1-3, you know who you are).

The huckleberry shake was so good we ended up ordering a second.

That’s where it all went downhill.

Full and satisfied, we walked down the street homewards when Murphy MacManus grabbed me and locked me in a passionate embrace, and what should have been the highlight of my teenette life took a rapid turn as his kiss deepened. First of all, he was about a foot taller than me, so he had to bend down at an awkward and frankly unreasonable angle. Secondly, oh my goodness, he used his tongue like someone trying to get the last little bit of peanut out of a jar. I mean, I don’t want to get too graphic here, but his tongue was in it to win it. Thirdly, I cut my lip on his braces. Fourthly, I was full of milkshake.

I pulled away from him but it was too late. His passionate kiss had triggered my gag reflexes. I spewed huckleberry milkshake all over my American Eagle flip flops.

It remains the 3rd most embarrassing moment of my life.

Poor Murphy MacManus gallantly helped me back to my dorm room, but the moment was ruined forever.

Ah, young love.