At some point in life, people start to grow and feel different around the opposite sex. Eventually people pair up and form some sort of relationship. From one night stands to lifetime commitments, its nature. Emotions start to race, feelings about each other start to arise, and eventually a connection is made. People express this in different forms, but it can be as simple as a kiss on the lips. Unfortunately, a first kiss did not happen as soon as Mike Birbiglia hoped.

  After listening to Mike Birbiglia's "Error at First Base", the main theme he was trying to get at was not to experience the first kiss exactly, but more a fear of not kissing would make him less accepted around his peers. 

Before diving into his main theme, he talks about his first date when he was 12. At first, his intentions seemed more genuine towards the fact that he had a crush on a girl and because of that he wanted to kiss her. Looking back, this is normal for boys who are entering or beginning their teens. Sometimes you have to just go with the flow and just ask her to hang out. On the other hand, it was his fear of not making “the make-out club” that ended up being his main motivation for wanting to kiss a girl. This is where he begins to build his main theme.

After making good use of his comic relief, his first attempt to kiss a girl was unfortunately a salsa insulated miss. Within his story he mentions how he attended an all male school. I went to a co-educational school so I could not exactly relate, but I can only imagine the “machoness” going on with all those dudes in one place. With his track record being low, he was afraid that if the other guys knew about it, they would belittle him. Again fear was a source for his white lies and further more towards wanting the kiss.

After more jokes and stories, the build up concludes with him kissing a girl. This is where he expresses his personal satisfaction with the fact that he is now part of “make-out club”. He finally had his moment. Since he had to essentially deceive his peers, he could not exactly express his joy publicly. Once again, fear of his peers judging him made him maintain his persona of kissing girls.

On the conclusion of his theme, he mentions a minor message. He talks about how that girl he kissed gave him a bad rep saying how he was a bad kisser. He jokes that being bad was just his thing and his friend replies, “me too dude”. What I took from this was that you know who your true friends are during hard situations. In his case his friend jumps in with him in an embarrassing moment. This was also his acceptance moment. His friend and everyone else acknowledged that he has kissed a girl regardless if he was bad or not, he simply did not care about that.

In relation to his story, it naturally brought out past memories during the summer of 6th going into 7th grade. I am going to admit that I was the last of my friends, friends to this day, to ever kiss a chick. Throughout the last year of middle school, my buddies just got it done. During and going past the last quarter of 6th grade, I was really diggin' this girl in my music class. Talked to her all the time, did stupid things to get her attention, etc. 

 On some night when my buddies and I were chilling in one of their cribs, I caught myself just going on and on about that girl. I had to find out how she felt about me. I figured I was going into the Jr. High, so it was about time to man up and join the "make-out club".

Luckily my friends sister was on the same soccer team or whatever, so instead of giving her a hard time like always, I had to play nice and do a little bit of interrogating. Asked her questions and told her to put in a good word, which she probably did not do, but nonetheless she came through with the gossip and I found out that girl was actually diggin’ me back. 

With great timing, that following weekend my parents went out of town and my cousin, who I later found out was paid ridiculous amounts to keep me out of trouble, allowed me to have a couple of people over. I had two of my buddies get dropped off early and this was my first chance to look “cool” to my dudes, lets just say I was not always the one who brought home the goodies, only on lucky days.

Later that day I made a follow up phone call, no text, and I was even able to get her to come with two of her friends. Things could not have gone any better. After all the shenanigans us kids did, we settled around a bonfire in my back yard. At some point I took her to my swing set - and made the move. Skipping a few details, I walked away with so much swag, but lets keep it real, I just felt very happy for what just happened. It was a night I will never forget.

            To wrap things up, Mike Birbiglia’s “Error at first base” delivered his overall theme of fear, or fear of peer pressure, being the drive to getting people to do certain things, in his case to kiss a girl. Being in an all dude school probably amplified his peer pressure situation, but he got it done any ways. Comic relief was used on queue, different emotions were felt, they were mostly laughter, and old memories creped up while listening through the comic skit. I thought his skit was overall pretty funny after not knowing anything about him. There were some parts that he lost me in, but his jokes kept me in the loop. Sometimes our fears of the unknown can most certainly push us to act on things we would never be comfortable doing, but at least they can lead to memories that can last forever. 

-Just a side note, I have to say Ira Glass' initial story about feeling up a girl in front of her family made me just laugh pretty hard. It just caught me off guard and it sounded funny as heck. If one of my dudes and I ever tried something like that back in the day, we would have gotten slapped for sure.