For last year’s sex issue, I wrote about my first “real” date with “Dave,” a particularly smooth operator with a loaded duct-tape wallet. I specified “real” because, technically, my first sort-of date happened two years earlier.

Allow me to set the scene: it is the summer of 2009. I am basically 14 years old (technically 13 for another three weeks), and I have convinced my parents to let me go away for a week with my friends to experience the “unsupervised” world. This world, of course, is an aggressively supervised church camp in Lake Geneva, Wis., a breeding ground for renewed spirituality and lots of Nice Boys.

The renewed spirituality is an intangible gift, as are the Nice Boys, whom we are not allowed to touch on account of a strict “no purple” rule at the camp. (Think about it: girls are pink, boys are blue, what do you get when you mix the two?)

At the end of the camp week, we have this thing called “banquet,” which is basically an event where all the teenagers dress up semi-fancy and have spaghetti in the mess hall. From day one, everybody is talking about whom they want to eat spaghetti with. All the girls have their eye on this guy, Not Jerry, who is of normal height and Australian origin and has very nice skin. This story is not about Not Jerry. This story is about Jerry.

You wouldn’t know Jerry’s age by looking at him because he’s literally 6 feet 4 inches. When I first see him, I’m terrified—that attitude doesn’t really change for the remainder of camp. We’re put into the same activities group for the week and sort of bond over the fact that we are the only two 14(ish)-year-olds in the group. Said bonding goes like this:

“Hi, I’m Jerry.”

“Hi.”

“How old are you?”

“Like, 14.”

“Oh, same.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’m just really tall.”

“Oh.”

At some point I learn that Tall Jerry is a pastor’s kid, which is true of like, 80 percent of the Nice Boys, but our conversation is pretty limited. Besides being a shy girl, I am—like I said—terrified of the fact that this kid is a foot taller than me. So I don’t engage much.

Tall Jerry engages, or tries to. His attempts throughout the week are rather clumsy and confusing. For example, one day we are sent off with our activities groups to play basketball. It is 80 degrees outside and I do not want to play basketball, so I sit on the side and watch. Tall Jerry comes over and asks if I am cold.

“No.”

He asks if I’m sure.

“Yes, it’s 80 degrees.”

Well, I look cold, he says, and he offers me his hoodie, which he has taken off because it is 80 degrees outside.

“No thank you, Jerry. It is 80 degrees outside.”

These little awkward interactions sprinkle themselves throughout the week until, at long last, banquet day arrives. I decide to go with the rest of the girls from my cabin because we had not struck up any romances with the Nice Boys. At least, that’s what I assume. And you know what happens when we assume.

Random Guy I Don’t Know comes up to me and asks, “Yo, are you Sarah Hands?”

Yes, I’m Sarah Hands. He tells me to follow him because his friend wants to talk to me.

Oh.

Random Guy leads me to Tall Jerry, who is sitting on a bench in a rather ill-fitted gray suit. Tall Jerry looks at me. My heart is racing—not out of passion but out of fear.

“I think you’re so pretty, and nice, and doyouwanttogotobanquetwithme?”

I mutter yes because one: he looks very scared and nervous and I don’t know how to say no and two: I am very scared and nervous and I don’t know how to say no.

The actual date is completely uneventful. I sit in silence with Tall Jerry the entire time. I think he asks me at one point if I like the spaghetti. I nod. I eat my spaghetti.

Tall Jerry follows me around after Chapel that night, even though I just want to go to sleep. I leave early the next morning and never see him again.

Perhaps I was too judgmental in my assessment of Tall Jerry—there was nothing wrong with him other than his scary height and apparent lack of climate-empathy. Perhaps if our paths cross again, we can find similarities other than age and rekindle that which only briefly was. I can only hope that Tall Jerry eventually finds a spaghetti love worthy of his towering-but-lonely soul.