It is said that “the first love is the deepest.”

Do you believe it? Has that been the case for you?

Or was the person who first coined the expression exaggerating a tad when he or she meant to say “the first love is very special because, well, it is the first love.”

I have to say that I still have “a place in my heart” for my first love. And vice versa, because I’m quoting her in the preceding sentence: she said that about me when we talked a few years back. (And, yes, all of my old Chomedey High friends know I am talking about Gloria. Smiles . . . Sigh . . .)

Gloria and I were goofy teeny-boppers when we “went out” together. But it took me many, many years — OK, decades — to get over her after we broke up, even though I went on to date others. Of course, looking at it objectively, i.e. from the mind, I know our relationship was nothing close to the mature relationship of two adults. God knows if we would have hit it off in our 20s or 30s or 40s. (Maybe God doesn’t know . . . just sayin’)

But the mind and the heart are two very different things when it comes to love. I still have pangs in my heart for her at times; indeed, it was one such pang today that inspired this post, when I heard the song Love Is All Around by The Troggs. It was our song, you know, so whenever I hear it, guess who I think about.

(And, no, dear Chomedey friends, I’m not angling to rekindle our great much-talked-about high-school love affair.)

I’m betting that many of you still have a flame, if only a pilot light, for your first love.

Do you?

Do tell. . .

— Jillian