For most of the teen populace, summer may be more than going to the beach and fooling around with friends.  The 2-month length of summer and its sweetness usually make teenagers want to seek for blooming relationships.  This is what we call summer flings or summer romances which according to a song heard in the Broadway musical, Grease–happens so fast.

I had my first (and probably my last) summer romance when I was 14.  It was the summer after my sophomore year in high school.  Coming from an exclusive high school, the summer before junior year was the year for prom date hunting for we rarely find boys around.  December of my sophomore year, our class had an interaction soiree with a class from La Salle Greenhills–an exclusive school for boys.  I met this guy who happened to live in the same street that my family lived in during my early childhood years.  When we moved into a farther street, his family moved in.  During the soiree, we had a game called “carwash” wherein the guys and girls made circles in front of each other.  For every 1 minute that passed, the guys rotated to the next girl and had 1 minute to ask questions about anything.  One of the most common questions was “where do you live?”.  Of course, this was a question for the guys to gauge if wooing this particular girl that they see as a potential object of desire (lol what) would be proximally convenient for them.

Mark, a 15 year old guy from the class who was called the class clown first asked me what my shampoo was.  Coincidentally, we were both using Head And Shoulders during that time.  The moment felt more magical when my classmate noticed that we had the same watch–only that his was black and mine was red.  We both just giggled about it and said “oo nga no” but deep inside, I knew that we were both reaching something unusual.  Mark asked me if I listen to the radio and I said yes.  When asked what my favorite radio station was, it turned out that we also had the same radio station.  The deal maker was when we both discovered that we were living in the same village.  I asked him in which street was he and he mentioned the street in which I used to live.  It was the bridge for a blooming friendship for we discovered that we had so many mutual friends and yes, it was very easy for us to see each other.

We exchanged numbers and YM IDs.  I remember that he was the first guy I had a 12-hour conversation with on the phone during summer.  I was scolded by my grandmother for being obviously a flirt for I did not care anymore if they were hearing my giggles or if they were seeing me blush while painstakingly holding the handset next to my ear.  We always saw each other in the church.  Back then, I was a member of our youth choir and during communion, he would always look up to the choir loft and smile at me.  Whenever that happened, my cheeks would flush and I won’t be able to contain giggling even in front of my mom who would rib me to remind me that I was being too much of a flirt in church. During the summer, we would also watch movies together.  He was the first guy I went to the theater house with.  We were with our friends but we couldn’t be detached from each other.  We looked smitten while having a summer dessert at the Ice Monster stall at Galleria.

It was simply amazing.  During the summer of 2005, the smile on my face couldn’t simply be eradicated by any awful or annoying matter that I encountered.  It was not only my first summer fling–it was also indeed my first taste of sweet romance that I only was able to see in teenybopper movies and books.

He became my prom date on February of next year and we even celebrated Valentine’s Day together in a cafe outside our village.  It wasn’t a fancy cafe.  As a matter of fact, it was just a rundown one with only 2-3 customers per night at the maximum.  Because we were both conservative people, we never kissed although we were able to hold hands and lean on each other at the back of the car during my prom night.

We started drifting when I got busy preparing for the college entrance exams the following summer.  The fact that he was pressured by his friends to have a different prom date in his own prom also added to the factors that made us drift apart little by little.  The following summer was never as sweet as the last one and it made me sad.  In just a blink of an eye, all the sweetness and amusement I had from the fluttering feelings in my stomach went gone and all those feelings were transformed into negative sentiments and bitterness.

Our summer romance just ended that way.  It was contrary to the blooming love that I thought would last until we step onto the realms of college.  We lost touch for almost 2 years.  When Facebook became a trend, I saw him in my friend requests list and took me time before I accepted his request.  In one of our conversations in Facebook chat he said that he still has hang-ups with our past romance.  Albeit he implied that he wanted to reconcile and have a fresh start, I just shrugged him off for I realized that our romance was purely out of my immature heart and mind and partly because of my fear that I would be a wallflower during prom night.  We were apparently overwhelmed by our infatuation and misrepresented it as puppy love.

I never had another summer romance after this incident.  I would not call it a traumatic experience because I even had good relationships after this.  As a matter of fact, I am very happily committed at the moment.  I think that it is safe to presume that summer flings are a way to fill out the gap being made by summer boredom.  Another contributing factor would be the sweetness of the summer vibe.  Most people (especially students) do not have the luxury of time to find romantic relationships during non-summer periods.  For this reason, summertime gives them the perfect opportunity to find the love of their lives that they have been waiting for so long.

Since I shared my experience with you readers, leave a comment in this entry narrating your summer romances (past and even present) and how it started.  How long did it last?  Are you currently in a relationship wherein summer fling acted as a jumpstart?  What are the tips to make summer romances last and bloom into a real serious relationship?  🙂  The floor is now open for you! 😀