At what age does love begin?

Following on from previous posts dealing with questions like, 'When you think of childhood, what toy comes to mind?' or 'When you were little, what did you dream of being when you grew up?' - Inevitably we get to the LOVE QUESTION?

So assuming you are one of the lucky/unlucky people in this world that has fallen in love - How old were you when you fell in love for the first time?

Not wanting to ask these questions, without being prepared to answer them myself; well I had a little think.

I do remember falling in love for the first time, in fact when I thought about it, I also remembered falling in love for the second time, and both seem to have remained with me in part because neither were very successful.

The first time, I was eleven, and it was a boy from school.  He was intelligent, attractive, funny, caring, just not caring for me!  If I remember it correctly, in order to gain his attention, I embarked on a process of getting to know him, become his friend so to speak.  Unfortunately, I misjudged the level of enthusiasm required, because we did become friends, in fact he told me, we were best friends, which is why he shared with me his secret desires for another girl, who happened to be far prettier than I, or at least so I thought at the time.  Not wanting to embarrass myself further, and reveal to him the real motives for my interest, I embarked on a plan to help him meet up with this other girl.  I know real handkerchief material here, but the thing is, I can't remember if I ever succeeded, which in a way is a good thing, because somehow, I guess little eleven year old me must have moved on.

The second time I fell in love, I was fifteen.  He wasn't particularily attractive, I remember that, so it was the old personality attraction going strong.  We were friends already, in that kind of girls and guys that hang out with each other in a group thing.  I must have driven my girlfriends mad talking about him, cause I remember I did a lot of it.  Anyhow, as is the way with these things, opportunity eventually presented itself.  It happened at Christmas time, and there was a local dance going on.  Needless to say, the preparation was a major affair, me sensing that my moment of Love's dream was about to happen.  Now you could have knocked me down with a feather, when he came over and asked me to dance.  There was a slow song playing, (not going to tell you which one, I need some secrets) and we danced, and I knew, this was it, at last the two of us were together.  Now, I made the mistake of thinking, that he was on the same wavelength as me, believing there was no need to interrupt our beautiful moment with small talk.  I know hard to believe, seeing as I had done nothing other than talk about him, until I was in his arms.  So we danced, listened to the music, holding each other in blissful silence for at least 5 minutes.  At the end of the dance, he thanked me and went back to his friends, obviously mistaking my silence for complete lack of interest.  I was devastated all Christmas, no amount of festive flavour was going to lift my gloom.  But after plenty of tears, regrets, and wanting to hit myself over the head for being such a ninny, eventually I got over this one too.

And yes, for any of you out there who might still be tempted to grab a hanky and cry on my behalf, I did fall in love again, and was lucky enough to be loved back!  So smiles all around.

Now having ranted on for so long with the above, I think I will leave my research notes on the tell-tale body language signs of someone being in love with you for another day.  There are some really interesting pieces of information, that one should be aware of.  They could have helped me no doubt at the time, but something tells me, I still would have jumped in feet first!

Please leave a comment, if something comes to mind, other than the fact that 120 Socks is a lunatic, a loving lunatic mind, cause I know that already!