I tried to trace this meme to the source, but failed for lack of effort. It’s a long meme, and I will probably get tired of writing before it is done. Hence, the “Part 1″ in the title of this post. But here goes:
1. Who was your first prom date?
Define prom. There were school dances, and I always made a point of asking a boy to the girl-ask-boy ones (I’m a girl, or I was, back in the day). But if by “prom” we mean boy-ask-girl, end-of-year, floor-length-dress prom, my date for the evening was David.
David and I met at the summer camp where we both worked the summer before. He was a camp counsellor, I was a wrangler, which means I cared for the horses and taught bratty campers the parts of the saddle before leading them on a short ride through the woods. David was tall and in college and drove a VW Bug. He asked me to marry him, and I said yes even though I was still in high school.
Fast forward to the end of the school year. We had moved to a new state, far east of the Flatlands, and David had been a security blanket of sorts. Maybe I didn’t make many friends in my new, soon-to-be-former hometown, but at least I was pinned. And, by God, that boy friend was going to be my date to the senior prom, even if he had to drive nearly 900 miles to get there.
My mom made my dress from dotted Swiss (yellow? did I really wear yellow? it makes me look jaundiced), but it did not fit right, caving in at the bust line. My hair was not right, either, sagging in the spring humidity. On our way to dinner, I took us in the wrong direction and we were a half-hour late for our reservations. We sat at a table for two while large groups of my classmates reveled all around us. I was miserable.
The dance itself? I don’t remember much about it except that one of my classmates had written a song for the occassion. I was so impressed by that, and stunned that I knew so little about these people I was graduating with. Suddenly, they seemed on the brink of adulthood, while I was still floundering in the swamp of adolescence.
Not long after that, I broke up with David, which really pissed off his mom. Never mind that he was cheating on me. I had already applied and been accepted to his college so, since this was 1970 when the schools were stuffed with young pimply men postponing the draft, off I flew in September, back to the Midwest, thank God. He was still there, now a senior. He wanted to get things started again, and when I would not cooperate, resorted to trying to make me jealous with his new girl friend. I was happy to have him out of my life.
So, what was the question?
