first love?

So I had this neighbor friend I used to hang out with a lot when I was in New Zealand.

We were around five or six.  We went to the same school and went to each other's places almost every day until one day when he suggested we draw pictures of a video game character he was really into.  We both enjoyed drawing so I said okay let's do it, but the problem was, I didn't know this video game, and although I thought I would develop some kind of interest in the characters, that just didn't happen.

Plus, Michael was being somewhat picky about my drawings and I finally told him I wanted to go home. He had no clue what was wrong and asked if I was hungry.  I said I just wanted to go home. We went to the living room where his parents were watching TV and they said, "Sweetie, if you're hungry we have chocolate chip cookies." But I just smiled and said I wanted to go home. And since that day, I stopped going over to his place.

There's an epilogue to this story though.  Michael's mom told me to come play with him again every time we met at school, and a month later on Halloween's Day, Michael came over in his dracula costume. It was really awkward (at least on my part), and to make things worse, my dad made us hold hands for a picture. We'd probably held hands like a million times but I felt so shy.

I don't remember what happened after that but a couple months later, I was bored and finally decided to go over to his place again. I remember being really nervous but his mom welcomed me with a warm smile, and Michael and I were friends again like nothing ever happened.

When I left NZ, we never wrote to each other, but he was one of the few people I searched for when I joined Facebook. He doesn't look all that innocent now but it was kind of nice to know that he remembered me too after more than a decade.