In response to Loralee, here’s my prom story. I had my first prom date when I was 30.As a high school student I was far too nerdy and unpopular ever to go to prom. Unthinkable. Think of slide rules (if you know or remember what they were) and get an idea of what I was in high school.Through some weird twists of fate I became a high school teacher. As the class advisor, I had to chaperone the prom. Early in the school year the kids said I should have a date. I didn’t have a wife and didn’t know any single women under 55. This was life in a very small town. Women my age were married or didn’t live there any more. The kids even asked various women they knew to be my date for me, and all turned me down. They decided I was hopeless. I started seeing a woman who was the older sister of one of my students. The older sister had come back to town after years away and out of state. I asked her to go to prom, which she thought was very funny, as her own prom had been about fifteen years before and she certainly had thought it was her last. She bought a staggeringly gorgeous dress and did up her hair and all the rest of whatever women do for these occasions. I wore a suit and brought a corsage and frankly I can’t remember whatever else but I know we did it up right.The kids were astonished. Oh, and while the kids nearly all left fashionably early, my date and I danced the whole night.
