Kiss Chase

Ben has been in love with Kirsten Rubens since forever. How this is possible, when they have both only been around for seven years, is beyond me, but that’s what he says. And seven year olds don’t love people anyway, do they? It’s against human nature or something, I swear, and Ben has never been one to go against human nature. In fact, he’s always in favour of human nature when anything disgusting is concerned, but apparently allowances can be made if the disgusting thing in question is a bowl-haired girl with buck teeth.

Ben first realised that Kirsten Rubens was the girl for him when she gave him a card in maths. A card. Honestly. And it wasn’t even one of those cheesy ones with a huge tacky heart flaring off the front. It was a Yu-Gi-Oh card. My little brother fell in love over some game card with a weird-looking creature on the front. Come to think of it, that weird-looking creature looks more than a little like Kirsten Rubens herself. It must be the teeth. Still, this Yu-Gi-Oh card incident triggered a series of events that would lure my brother into complete infatuation. Kirsten Rubens would seduce him with romantic gestures such as passing the prit stick and sitting next to him during ‘Words and Pictures’. In the back row of the classroom she would hold his hand whilst being taught ‘how magic pencil draws it’. Still, Kirsten couldn’t go on making the first moves forever.

Today, during morning break, there had been a game of Kiss Chase and the ancient art of ‘foot in’ had decided that Ben and the other boys in his class would be ‘on’ first. There had been no better time for him to act.

“I fell over twice running,” he said, pulling up his trouser leg to show his love-bruised knee. “And I crashed into a whole group of year sixes.” He was beaming proudly now as only a few heroic people have the ability to crash into a group of year sixes and live to tell the tale. “They started shouting and Kirsten told them to shut up.” He sighed in admiration for his strong woman. “But she was standing still, so I caught her.”

“Did you kiss her?” I asked, trying to sound interested. Ben’s blushing face immediately crumpled into one of disgust.

“No. That’s gross.”

“But it was kiss chase.”

“Yeah,” he said sagely, “but no one ever kisses anyone.”

Of course. How silly of me.

My brother is planning his first romantic meal for Kirsten on Thursday. They are going to have fish fingers and chips on trays in front of the TV and, as this is a special occasion, they’ll have the posh Sainsbury’s ice cream for pudding. I can picture them now, their dark silhouettes in front of the gleaming TV screen, whispering sweet nothings about Papier Mâchè while Neil Buchanan has another one of his Art Attacks.