Sometimes it’s easy to forget that teachers were once our age. They too had awkward kisses, embarrassing moments, and first parties. I’ve collected a few teachers’ first kiss stories:

GREG MONFILS: “Actually, this is more of a story about me not taking the opportunity to have my first kiss. I hadn’t had my first kiss, and then I was invited to a party in the 6th grade. It was my best friend who was throwing the party and it was on a weekend night. So I go to the party and it’s just three boys and three girls, and my friend’s mom made us ice cream sodas, and we all went back to the back patio. He had a sizable yard, and we had an empty bottle, so we started playing spin the bottle. Do you know what spin the bottle is? Well, I didn’t. I’d heard of spin the bottle, I knew that it had something to do with bringing girls and boys together, but I had no idea past that. So it spins, and it points to me and this girl. And I didn’t know what to do. So she takes my hand and we go walking behind a hedge. I just kept walking. And we came out from behind and I hadn’t kissed her! And it was kind of awkward and I didn’t know why. And we sat down again… We spin it a few more times, and it came to me and this girl again. She just wouldn’t do it. Again, I felt embarrassed, but I didn’t know why I was embarrassed. After a few more spins I figured out what was going on because [the rest of the kids] were behind that hedge for a long time. We just walked! So, actually, I probably had my first kiss eventually [during spin the bottle]. But I missed the first few opportunities. I don’t know why I was that naive about spin the bottle.”

CHASE FRETWELL: “My first kiss was when I was 16 years old when I was a sophomore in high school. It was awkward because my boyfriend at the time and I didn’t have our drivers licenses yet, so my parents had to drop us off. I think it was the second or third date. We went to the Georgia Aquarium and it’s sort of in a loop. And we’re walking, being awkward, being high schoolers. I’m pretty sure we were talking about science homework. I was like okay, cool, he doesn’t like me, but we’re almost at the end of the loop so maybe this date will be over and I can move on with my awkward teenage life. We get to the last room, and the aquarium in Georgia is really huge, like super bright and colorful, but the last room isn’t this cheery stereotypical place with music playing, it’s quieter and the lighting is darker. No one was in there but us, and there’s this giant fish tank with these tropical fish that’s well lit and the rest of the room is dark. And we kissed in front of that fish tank.”

KATIE-ROSE BRESLIN: “I was a bit of a late bloomer, so I didn’t have my first kiss until three days before my sixteenth birthday. It was at [LGBTQ] family camp, and it was a little embarrassing. Of course, my first kiss was with a boy at a queer family camp, and we snuck into the woods and made out. And it was gross. But when he decided that maybe it wasn’t a good idea and wanted to stop, I was really heartbroken and incensed, even though I kind of agreed. I did not like that he was the one to call it. I was absolutely heartbroken and very dramatic—there was a lot of crying. When I got back from the summer and came for my sophomore year at Urban, I enrolled in Peer Ed theater because I was in Peer Resource and I had to take it. We were talking in class about our summers, and I told them about this song when I came back from summer camp. It was about this kiss… It was this really cheesy song about my kiss and how I didn’t regret it even if it ended badly. I ended up performing the song in Peer-Ed theater as part of the finale of the show. It’s so embarrassing looking back on it. [The kiss] felt romantic because there was sun coming through the trees, a river flowing, the setting was really romantic. But the actual kiss was kind of gross. There were braces involved. Not mine.”

CHARISSE WU: “Growing up, I had a pretty steady diet of teen romance movies like ‘She’s All That,’ ‘Ten Things I Hate About You,’ and the Disney princess movies were also really big. I had a lot of romantic notions. I also didn’t date anyone through elementary or middle school, and I never chased anyone down to kiss them or was kissed. There was this boy that I liked who was also my first boyfriend in high school. He asked me out and taught me to drive in his old-school Subaru. We had even gone to a high school dance together and not kissed. And I was finally like, I think we’re ready to have our first kiss maybe. And it was in my room after school when we were supposed to be working on homework and I knew my parents weren’t gonna be home and I was like, ‘this is the time.’ We kind of looked at each other and inched forward, and it was like ‘whoa, we’re gonna kiss.’ And I remember when we kissed, I just kind of thought, because sometimes I have associations with colors or smells or memory, that kissing him felt like eating cucumber slices, and I was like, hm, this is interesting, and it’s kind of like cold and wet and fine. You know, it’s fine. We kissed, and I didn’t feel all of the fireworks and all of the things, and it wasn’t in the rain and I wasn’t caught by surprise, all these ways I had seen it play out, with a huge emotional crescendo. And it was like, me having all these big ideas and then cue to me eating cucumber slices and being like, it’s not bad, but it’s not great either. It was just kind of cold and alright.”

ERIN GIBB: “Well, my first kiss happened in high school. Actually, it was my freshman year, it was my first time working on a show as a technician. And then I went to the cast party with everybody and my crush at the time was also there. I didn’t know that they also had a crush on me. So it was one of those situations where everyone was hanging out, having a great time, and then we are able to have some one-on-one time where we were able to get away and just like chat and hang out. And then that’s when the first kiss happened and it was kind of nice. And then it was awkward after that because we got caught by the parents who were throwing the party because we were just in the backyard. And then, I grew up in a very Christian area, so it was one of those moments where they were like, ‘You’re not allowed to do this, what are you doing!’ So in all embarrassing fashion, it was a shutdown of the entire party. So it was like my first kiss shut down the entire first cast party I ever went to. But you know, it was still great.”