95 A REVIEW OF—AH! SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE—IS IN ORDER BEFORE WE SEE WHAT’S IN STORE FOR ANNIE AND JOSEPH LEFT LIP-LOCKED IN THE ALLEY

IF INSIGHT INTO ANNIE'S INNER LIFE AT THE MOMENT OF HER FIRST KISS SPOTLIGHTS A QUESTION IN NEED OF AN ASTUTE ANSWER THEN WHAT, ‘PREY’ TELL, MIGHT BE THE ILLUSIVE QUESTION IN NEED OF ANSWERING?  

First of all, the illusive question relates to the deeply repressed state of Annie’s primary inner conflict:  To retreat from identifying and confronting spikes of latent anxiety or to muster the courage necessary to patiently identify, openly confront and expunge each emergent spike of subconscious fear, once and for all—that is the question at hand...

If we know that the answer to the last question suggests Annie’s need to muster the courage and patience necessary to calm spikes of anxiety in hopes of awaiting the natural emergence of an intuitive sense of readiness to advance in the face of fear then— 

What is THE problem? 

THE problem, in Annie’s case, is twofold:

At the age of twelve, Annie has no clue whatsoever of the importance of differentiating a sudden spike in anxiety based in a near and present danger closing in from the re-emergence of yesteryear’s unresolved fears stalking her current peace of mind.  (Seriously—how many adults know to do that?)

Secondly, fate has not gifted Annie’s intuitive readiness with time to advance naturally, step by step, at her own pace.  At least not at the age of twelve when sexual readiness in need of ripening is in question.   Why not?

Because, each time the advancement of sexual experimentation is offered to Annie at an age-appropriate stage of her life, an upsurge of fearful-confusion based in inner conflict will arouse this young girl’s survival instinct to cross wires with her brain’s natural pleasure center’s desire to taste young love’s first kiss, and as long as Annie has no conscious clue whatsoever of the fact that deep within her subconscious, the trigger hair arousal of wrestle-mania stands guard to shadow box with repressed fears based in sexual abuse of which she has not even one memory of suffering repeatedly within the clutches of a predatory pedophile—resultant of Annie’s highly combustible, deeply repressed state of negatively charged sexual energy stimulating sudden strikes of latent anxiety to spike, we are about to see what happens when her processor’s defensive reactions, peaking simultaneously with Joseph’s, crash, like a pair of cymbals so discordantly, together, as to offer us sound reason to surmise that once anxiety abounds all around, two heads are not better than one—and with today's string of insights clearly stated here it comes, at last—TRUE LOVE’S FIRST IMPASSIONED KISS:

While standing in the alley, staring down at Annie (whose love struck, dark lashed, blue eyes are undeniably locked into his), a strong young man, suddenly blushing furiously, blurts out:  Annie—Bob is having a party (their sixth grade class’s first ever boy and girl party), and I want you to go with me. 

Needless to say, Annie can't believe her ears.  In fact, she can hardly breathe! First of all,  she's  never been to a boy and girl party.  Secondly, a subconscious flashback of male hysteria sweeping through a van aiming a barrage of insults directly at her body floods her current state of mind with unresolved anxiety, darting so quickly into and out of a sweet girl’s shocked-to-max processor as to set her heart to pounding blood 'arushin' through her body, leaving any calm vestige of comprehension reeling with disbelief concerning the remote possibility of this tall, handsome, popular Leader of the Pack choosing Miss Piggy as his first date, leaving doe-eyed, long legged Hillary and gorgeous from head to toe Viv to fade from his mind whenever Annie’s nearness fills his heart with bliss??? ... on the other hand—

*As long as these wondrous moments of suspended animation leave a pair of brains fated to feel flash frozen within The Land of Heartfelt Enchantment, all connection to logic flies out of both heads suggesting why we're about to observe: 

 A nice boy with nerves a-jangling and a good girl,  seen swooning, swept so wholly under first love's magic spell as to be unable to communicate so much as one word that makes any sense, at all, until, silence, lasting over long, rankles Joseph’s  fear of rejection to spike, suggesting his tenderness for Annie ducking for cover, exposing only explosively combustible emotion readying itself to blow any last fragment of composure to kingdom come—as proves classic whenever love’s magic spell, holding two minds hostage, over long, stimulates anxiety to pierce both hearts to the core so as to unleash at least one strangled voice to spit out defensive words such as these: 

 Annie-do-you-wanna go-with-me-or-not?

As Annie’s processor remains wordless, reeling within her very own, oxygen deprived, spellbound state of shock (how can this miracle be happening to anyone as unattractive as me?), Joseph's boyish hopes, churning defensively into angst darken the whole of his mind so that his sapphire star struck eyes, suddenly flashing with red hot fiery humiliation, fuels his voice to sputter sharply:  

Oh—just forget it!   

At this, Annie’s dazed and confused intelligence stirs just enough to blurt out:  Wait!  I wanna go with you! 

With relief surging hotly through him, Joseph’s build up of cross-wired emotional tension lunges forth, and grasping  Annie's shoulders, he impulsively yanks a dizzied girl against the length of his body—offering us a bird’s eye view of this soon to be star-crossed pair engaging in their very first preteen bear hug, ever, inspiring a twelve year old, man-sized child to pull his head back just enough to plant True Love's First Kiss possessively onto his (brain dead) sweetheart's lips as though marking her his.  

I wish my next words were:  Then, smiling shyly up at Joseph, Annie's spirit sights the blue bird of happiness landing on her shoulder in readiness to guide both lad and lass to float straight toward cloud nine, where they can clearly be seen holding hands, sipping sodas, going steady, being crowned prom queen and king and growing up to live happily ever after (and their children will, too). THE END ... 

Unfortunately that last ride through fantasyland is not what reality has in store for this inexperienced pair as you shall soon see.

Instead of watching these love birds soar up to cloud nine, we’ll witness throes of impassioned reactions splashing repressed angst, back and forth, and being that neither of these tussling preteens has any clue as to how to regain, much less help one another to maintain control over each other's deeply confounding, snow-balling avalanche of repressed emotional release, things go straight from bad to worst!  

As I'm sure you're feeling over ready to see Annie's spontaneous reaction to Captain Hormone's impassioned lip lock, please stay tuned to this channel so as to absorb what happens next, showcasing the little that we can see of emotions running amuck neath the surface of conscious awareness, which is why all hell is about to break loose once this matched set of preteen reactors is fated to slip slide straight down from seven minutes in heaven toward The End of the worst ‘first love’ scene, ever— 

Good Lord—if only Socrates or The Bard had really been soaring overhead, puppy love might have enjoyed at least a light-hearted romp—  

—and if fate had not the heartfelt compassion to conjure up the spirit of one sage or the other, couldn't Cupid, cycling by, have aimed his bow just a bit higher than both hearts so as to shoot a pair of dizzied minds with a bit of knowledge concerning subconscious demons on the loose dueling over 'whose on first'?  Geez! If all the world's a stage then how often must thee and I embody the leads in Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello Or Grease? 

For heaven sake, must egocentric misunderstandings rattle the brains of every young couple, from one generation to the next, including those who marry only to separate at a later date, thus unconsciously injecting their repressed angst into the deeply confused hearts and minds of their kids???  If knowledge empowers change for the better then why isn't someone—who's undertaken a personal quest to understand what's classically going wrong in home after home—sending taste tests of this vital info into cyberspace?  Oh—wait!  That would be me!