Dr Charlotte Reznick, doctor and author of The Power of Your Child’s Imagination: How to Transform Stress and Anxiety Into Joy and Success, has warned that kissing your child on the mouth can be stimulating and therefore ‘confusing’ to children. The mouth, she argues, is an erogenous zone and therefore it may be sexually confusing to kiss your parents (or, depending on age, child) on the lips.
We have neither the time nor the means to exhume the corpse of Sigmund Freud to ask him for a couple of snappy lines on the subject. So instead, I bring you a timeline of your life in kissing:
The kiss of life
This will probably come a couple of seconds after you emerge, screaming and covered in shit from your mother’s body (often her vagina which, paging Dr Reznick, is also an erogenous zone). You might have been held in the air and thwacked on the arse first, you may indeed have come out arse-first yourself and you may have been pulled out via a C-section.
Whatever the circumstances, hopefully the first kiss of your life will be with your mother, as she counts your fingers and tries to recover.
The Christmas Card kiss
If, like me, you grew up in the sort of affection-heavy environment where you saw adults embrace and kiss on the cheek, people kissing in paintings and on telly, or were kissed by your parents, then you will in all likelihood make like a faux-retro greetings card and kiss another kid, possibly while sitting on a step or standing on a beach.
The ‘why do people do this?’ kiss
Mine was with a girl called Catherine, yours may have been with a girl called Catherine too. You’ve seen enough daytime television and, you know, existed in the world long enough to understand that people kiss. Lots of people kiss. A lot of the time and for different reasons. So, you think, what does it feel like? Is it the same as being kissed goodnight? So you grab a girl called Catherine and have a go. It’s basically fine.
The Spin the Bottle kiss
One of you has braces, another just made the enormous tactical error of eating some cheese and onion crisps, one guy is pretending to have snogged 14 girls last summer on holiday in Spain (he didn’t), one girl is not-so-subtley practicing on her own hand in the kitchen. And someone has pulled out a bottle and suggested a quick round of everybody’s favourite way to exchange saliva. This was how I got my first snog. He had a mouth like a piece of Toblerone. It was awful.
The same sex kiss
It’s either the start of something significant or a minor diversion, like taking an unmarked turning off a motorway. Either way, it’s a rite of passage kiss.
The kiss off
Ach, this is a bad one. It’s basically the kiss that says, ‘That was nice but there’s no way you’re ever hearing from me again. And I don’t even have the decency to tell you to your face.’ It’s a kiss often delivered at a bus stop or in a hallway. It’s a kiss we’d all rather forget but should, nonetheless learn from.
The melting legs kiss
You’ve had a fair few kisses before, but it’s never felt like this. Sweet weeping mother of love, this is incredible. You could do this all night. I mean, you might. Or you might move on to something more horizontal. But wow. This. Kiss. Is. Incredible. I don’t think I can feel my feet. I’m not sure if I even have eyes any more.
The accidental boss kiss
While we are, strictly speaking, European (for now, anyway), we’ve never quite nailed the formal kiss have we? One of you goes for a handshake, the other ends up kissing a lapel, there may be a touch of earlobe involved. All-in-all, it’s a car crash. And you only have your mouth and centuries of codified social awkwardness to blame.
The soft grandmother kiss
Her skin is like a peach and you love her with not just your heart, but in your bones too. Kissing her cheek is like getting tucked under a feather duvet. Kissing her cheek is like holding a freshly-boiled egg. Kissing her cheek is like hearing a song you used to hear in your cot at night. You have no idea how much you’ll miss kissing her cheek when she’s gone.
The ‘welcome to my home, parents’, kiss
Well, this is weird: welcoming your mum, dad or various collections of parental figures into your own home. When did this happen? And when did we start kissing by your own coat rack?
The break-up kiss
You know this is the last time you’ll ever kiss. Probably. It’s a pain so heavy, so unbearable, so expected and yet unfathomable that you cannot physically bear it. So you kiss again. Just quickly. Then you look at the floor. Then you try to remember where your heart used to sit, because right now it’s sitting on the pavement.
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Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.