Just to illustrate how awkward I was with girls, let me recount to you my very first date. To this day it still makes me cringe. Everyone has a fantasy where they could go back in time and go through the same incident with the gift of hindsight and maturity. Mine was to redo this traumatic episode.

I was 12 turning 13 when I had a crush on this girl in my first year at high school. After lots of tell-tale signs of blushing and clamping up in her presence, her friends and mine sussed out what was going on. But as with all girls (nay, women!), she feigned ignorance. Many notes were passed around in class and gossip mongering peaked for a while. So gutless was I that she finally confronted me, “What’s going on?”

I stumbled to find the right words and then - as my friend later described it - the skies opened up, rain came splashing down, thunder roared and lighting lit up the skies and I blurted out, “I want to go out with you!” I didn’t say it softly either. I screamed out loud like a rabid groupie. And as proof of how more mature girls are at that age, she said calmly, “We’ll talk after school”.

We did talk, and she gave me her number. During that poor excuse of a phone call that I made after 2 hours of deliberating, she asked, “Are you bringing a friend?” I said somewhat dejectedly, “Sure, why not.” So I asked my best friend at the time to come along.

And there we were waiting outside the cinema nervously (well, actually only me). She showed up. Not only did she bring one friend, she brought two. *Plus* her little brother. Mucho fabuloso. Anyway, we bought our tickets and went in. Everyone proceeded to sit down - around her. Like could this get any better??? I slumped down on the seat in front of her, muttering and sulking.

She passed me a candy during the movie. That was the one redeeming part of the whole date. But the movie was to become one of my all time favourites - “RoboCop”. Now is that a date movie or what!?

Epilogue - the girl is the one I mentioned in my post about moving to Australia. Things between us got a little less awkward after a while and we became friends. I came to Perth and she went to Sydney a year later. We wrote for a while and I caught up with her once in Sydney. She’s now back in KL and I haven’t seen her for 12 years.