The first boy who ever caught my attention was a neighbour-boy named Miles. Since my dad had always been a huge Miles Davis fan, I automatically assumed the neighbour-boy was super cool because he shared that name.
Blonde-haired, blue-eyed Miles was the same age, and went to the same grade-two class as me. We walked with his older brother to and from school everyday. I’d skip merrily over to his house in the mornings and steal a spoonful or two of his cereal, then come back after school to kick his ass in Mortal Combat until dinner. He picked me flowers and told me I would be his wife one day, but when I was, I wouldn’t be allowed to beat him in video games. Little did he know I was just a button-masher and actually couldn’t play any other video game what-so-ever. I kept that to myself.
He moved away the summer before grade three, but our neighbourhood romance ended abruptly before he left.
We were playing in my back yard around my pear tree when Miles inexplicably, and quite suddenly, threw a pear at me. This wouldn’t have been so bad, but the hard, unripe pear hit me square on the nose. My mom came out of the house to my screaming. Not knowing what happened, just seeing the blood spewing out of my nose, mixing with tears, streaming over my gaping, crying mouth - she yelled at him to leave.
He never came back.
