And then he kissed me. And I realized I would rather be deaf than blind, because then I could still get lost in his eyes.

I was just seven years old. My mom still dried my hair after I took a shower and I didn't even wear a training bra yet. And he kissed me. Right there in the swimming pool, under the oak tree shadows that danced on the water's surface, right there at my grandparents' house when I was just seven years old.

He had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. They glowed a bright blue, inviting you to gaze into them and be changed forever. And his eyelashes. Oh, his eyelashes. They framed his eyes, protecting those baby blues from the tainted world. He always wore a pair of blue swim trunks with a permanently engraved grass stain on his butt. It seemed to grow larger as the days passed, taunting, "Look at me! You want to touch me."

I never touched the stain, burning forever on his shorts, but it seemed like it knew exactly what I hoped no one else would ever know: I loved him. I loved all seven years of him.

"I'm going to marry him some day, Grandpa. I'm going to marry Andy and his eyes."

"Yes, of course you are. All the girls like him. They all say they love his eyes."

I guess it was his eyes that led me to his house day after day to see if he could go swimming. He was always allowed; his parents loved me.

That was just an exceedingly grand day. I smiled all the way to his house, and he was even more blissful than usual. Instead of our daily race to my grandparents' house, we sauntered over at a leisurely pace. All I could think about was how much I wanted to marry him and how it would be so nice to take walks with him to absolutely nowhere. All of a sudden, he galloped off and jumped in the pool.

"C'mon, Kristen! Why are you so slow today?"

Not responding, I jumped in. He swam over to me.

"You have pretty hair for a girl."

"Yeah, well, you have pretty eyes for a guy."

"Yeah, well ..."

He leaned over, and then he kissed me.