This episode of Spark’s True Stories Told Live is about first love. I’m not completely sure who my first real love was. It might have been my optometrist’s son, who gave me my first kiss in the equipment closet during our fathers' softball game. Or it might have been the boy in middle school I told all my friends I DEFINITELY didn’t like. Maybe it was the boy in college who kissed me once and then decided he just wanted to be friends.

It was probably my best-friend-turned-boyfriend-turned-cheater-turned-heartbreaker. I knew I was in love with him, but I’d like to think my first REAL love is my current boyfriend. Mostly because that’s a better story for all you readers.

We hear stories from Gretel. At 19 years old, Gretel is living with her first boyfriend and can’t get him to stop playing video games for anything. We also hear from Deveena. Deveena met her first love when she was 18, during the third week of university. Deveena grew up as the brown girl in a group of white girls. She put up with a lot of racism from the boys she grew up with. It got better as she got older but she felt like no one was really seeing her. She met someone who made her feel seen. He made it possible for her to love herself.

My favorite story of first love is from Diana. At 15 years old, Diana was in love with a boy named Beau, whom she worked with at the zoo in Louisiana. He played jazz guitar and was very cool. He finally asked her out and told her to meet him at 6pm the next Tuesday. So she went and waited—and got stood up. She later found out that Beau had arranged for a couple of his friends to drive by and take pictures of her looking dejected while she was waiting for him. “It was the most atrocious thing that has ever happened to me,” she says. Two years later at their high school graduation, he apologized. He said he’d felt bad about it for two years and promised to never do that to another human being. Diana replied, “Okay Beau, you can go fuck yourself.”

Bonus info: If you’re thinking about giving your first love a call, you should know that CBS News cites a study by a California State University professor, which says that, “former sweethearts who meet up later in life, and are single, have a better than 70 percent chance of getting back together for good.”