Hi neighbor!
My daughter went to her high school homecoming dance last weekend which of course summoned memories of MY high school homecoming. I’d had a crush on a popular boy named Todd for ages, and I finally worked up the nerve to ask him to the dance (how progressive of me!). I felt invincible when he said yes, like my entire life had come into focus.
The next week passed like a dream—I had my date and nothing else mattered. “I’m going to the dance with Todd,” I kept whispering to myself. The weekend before the dance, Todd called twice while I was out. I assumed he was calling to finalize plans (and possibly admit he was falling in love with me?!?). No neighbor, he was not. As he nervously explained over the phone, he no longer wanted to go to the dance with me. He had cozied up to girl named Kristen at a party the previous night, where they confessed their feelings for one another. It made more sense to go to the dance with Kristen, he said, but he would honor his original commitment to me if I wanted. I was speechless, which made Todd antsy. He needed me to make him feel better about this terrible thing he was doing, and I wasn’t playing along. I told him I needed time to think. As soon as I hung up the phone, Kristen called with a solution to our “dilemma.” Since she already had a date too (a nice boy from my math class), maybe I could go with him instead. “You mean like switch dates?” I asked. “Yes!” she said, making the whole thing sound like exchanging a sweater for a different color. I quickly got off the phone with her too.
Eventually I called Todd and Kristen back and politely told them to pound sand. By the next day, word quickly spread. I was no longer walking on air; I was slogging through a fog of humiliation and rejection. My friends felt sorry for me, but I knew what lie behind their pitying faces—relief that it hadn’t happened to them. Two days before homecoming, my friend Chris called. He’d heard what Todd had done and asked if I’d like to go to the dance with him. It was too late to order a corsage, so he showed up at my house with a single pink rose. We danced and danced, and I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. I’ve since lost touch with Chris, but I’ll never forget his kindness.
PS Todd and Kristen broke up two months later.
XOXO,
Kate
