I fell in love for the first time at seventeen. It was a late summer night bathed by the light of a sky full of stars. A nip of autumn was teasing the air as a bonfire burned in the distance. I hid with him in a field of maize and he kissed me there, the smell of damp earth floating up beneath us.

When I was small I found my father’s record albums stashed away in a closet underneath the stairs to our basement. Bands like Chicago, Steely Dan, and Herman’s Hermits graced the cardboard covers of these long-forgotten treasures. The most colorful one of them all was an album titled “Cat Stevens Greatest Hits” all in capital letters. A blue sky speckled with clouds was the backdrop against a flag flying with the image of a bearded man with tousled hair and symbols I did not recognize.

I found an old record player nearby covered in yellow vinyl upholstery that had started to peel away from the particle board box. The electronics inside seemed to all be in place so I plugged the cord stretching from the yellow box into the wall just outside the closet where these things had been found.

I placed the black round record on the circular table inside the box and flipped the switch. The record began to spin and gently, I placed the needle on the turning record. Those first heavy strums of an acoustic guitar playing “Wild World” hit my ears and I fell in love, but only a little bit this time.

When Dane kissed me there in the cornfield on that warm August night, I thought this would be my last first kiss.

A month later, when United Airlines Flight 175 struck the south tower of the World Trade Center, the country knew this was no accident. People had died. People were dying and even more would soon be in the sort of peril never before witnessed on American soil. We lost our innocence that day, or at least whatever innocence we still possessed after more than two hundred years of white washing over the genocidal sins of our forefathers. The last residential “indian” school only just closed in the 1970s. I did not learn that from the education I received at a government school. I had to wonder if Cat Stevens knew just how wild the world was when he released that song in 1970.

Oh, baby baby its a wild world. It’s not just hard – it is impossible to get by just upon a smile. This world is cold, and cruel, and dark. Most of the universe is empty space and most of humanity is selfish, bitter, and hateful. How can anyone still remember the innocence of a child?

The western world went to war and Dane broke my young heart. A few months later, he showed up at my doorstep with a dozen roses and an apology. I think he was scared as he was about to deploy for combat in Afghanistan. Having a girl back home missing him and wanting him to come back could make the difference between life and death out there in the sandbox. I could not give him forgiveness because the damage had already been done. The first cut is the deepest.