She slipped away from her cabin and rushed down to the beach dunes at her sleep-away camp where Jack, her camp boyfriend, was waiting for her. He gently kissed her nervous lips, his braces touching her teeth, and she knew she wasn’t into it. Sarah* pulled away and rushed back to her cabin, where her counselors waited for her return, angered that she snuck out.

“We both laugh about it all of the time now,” Sarah said. “We are really good friends, but it was just so weird.”

Sarah was 13 when she had her first kiss, just like Katie Jones ’15, who was at a friend’s house and thought her friend’s older brother’s friend, who was 17, was very cute. Her friend let it slip that Katie had never been kissed, and the brother’s friend eagerly tried to change that.

“He was like, I’ll make out with you, but I was like, no, it’s fine,” Jones said. “But then he was like, no, I want to.”

Jones went to sit next to him on her friend’s bed, but then he told her to move in front of him.

“So I went and stood in front of him, my friend started singing, which is so awkward, and then he grabbed my face, and was like, all right come over here,” Jones said. “I was so afraid. It was kind of awkward and he had really big lips, so I guess it was nice.”

English teacher Jocelyn Medawar’s first kiss was also with an older guy, sitting in a stick-shift car. Medawar was 14 and the boy was 17 when she had her first kiss. She said that she did not enjoy it but found it rather shocking.

“I thought it was probably one of the most disgusting experiences of my life,” Medawar said. “I did not know all that was, perhaps, involved in a first kiss. Tongues, I didn’t know tongues were involved.”

After the kiss, Medawar ran to her friend who gave her advice. She said, “Babe, try again,” and that is exactly what Medawar did.

Medawar kissed the same boy again, and her second kiss was awesome.

Noah Gains ’15 was just 11 years old when he had his first kiss. He had been going out with his elementary school girlfriend for a couple of days, and after school, his friends were all asking him to kiss her. They were sitting on a bench, and he pecked her, got up, and sprinted away.

“I was really nervous and she was nervous, and I was really, really awkward,” Gains said. “We joked about it for a while.”

Marc Shkurovich ’15 was 14 when he had his first kiss. He was lying on the volleyball court at his camp with his camp girlfriend of five days, when he decided he wanted to kiss her.

“I just went for it, and she kissed me back,” Shkurovich said. “It was nice.”

Unlike Shkurovich, who was in middle school when he had his first kiss, Emily Kelkar ’15 had her first kiss during her junior year with her boyfriend of seven months at the time after the homecoming dance.

“We were standing outside by the pool and we were alone,” Kelkar said. “Neither of us knew what to do I guess, so we were sitting outside for like 20 minutes having the most awkward conversation, and then I was like, What do you want to do? And then he was like, maybe I’ll show you, and then he kissed me.”

Kelkar said it felt like the kiss lasted forever, but said it was only about 10 seconds.

“I guess that is when I realized that I was falling in love,” Kelkar said.

*Names have been changed.