She wouldn’t offer if she were sober…

… and I wouldn’t say no if I was drunk.

I’m talking about one of my high school girlfriends. She broke it off after two months for reasons I didn’t understand at the time. What the heck, I was sixteen and she was fourteen, it happens.

The thing that got me thinking about it was a recent post on Facebook – she listed me as one of her "firsts". I was her very first ever…….
prom date. Really people, grow up…

We were not dating at the time we went to prom. That time or the next year. Yeah, I’m a glutton for punishment, I know. We met up a few times after she and the others in my younger circle of friends started college. There was the night I stayed with them at the beach house. That was great. She got rip-roaring drunk and I went down to "her" room to stay with her and make sure she didn’t choke on her own sick or anything. And she made several offers that I declined. I think one of our other friends was trying to chaperon us but she was having problems keeping her sixteen year old sister and one of the other friends’ nineteen year old frat brothers apart. I guess she figured that if the two of us couldn’t keep our hands off each other she wouldn’t have to explain it to her parents, so she abandoned us in pretty short order. When my former prom date and I both woke up the next morning, she asked me why I was sleeping in the floor. I told her it was because she really really wanted me not to, so I thought it was best. Her face got beet red and she apologized many times, since she knew I still had a tiny thing for her. That’s the same night we were out on the beach, sitting by ourselves and talking, and we got into a bit of a friendly verbal joust, which ended when I called her "Thumper". I’m fairly certain my face turned bright red at that point, and I’m thankful there was no moon out. She, of course, was rolling around the sand dune laughing like a lunatic at my mistake. I think that took some of the sting out for me, the fact that she thought it was funny, and from my descriptions of Thumper she could see the similarities and understand how, in the starlight with her sitting slightly behind and above me, I could call her the wrong name.

The other time we met up was a little different. I didn’t realize she’d had as much to drink as she must have had. We walked along the beach. We talked. We ended up in my car because the hotel rooms were way over-crowded (this was a New Year’s get together with twenty people splitting two hotel rooms) and stuff happened. Liberals call it "Abstinence Plus." Conservatives and most Libertarians I know call it "Everything But." At any rate, it was fun. And totally not her first time…

Wow.

Anyway, that was spinning ’round my noggin and I thought I’d share. She’s currently living in the town we went to high school in, and dating her ex-husband. I didn’t ask, knowing her it probably wouldn’t make any sense anyway.

The dress she wore to that first prom was, how should I say this, hideous covers it I think. It was 1987, so poofy taffeta was all the rage, and her dress was this weird shade of pink. Blech. It was a strapless deal with more poofy pink ruffles along the neck/shoulders, and I think several rows of poofy pink ruffles along the "dress" part of the dress. The thing that made it stand out even more was it wasn’t the original dress she picked out. She told me she was wearing a red dress, so my father and I ordered a tux with a red bowtie and cummerbund to match. Oh My God we clashed so badly. She saw the pink dress and HAD TO HAVE IT two days before the prom. No way I could change the tux then, so I was stuck.

The next year we matched perfectly though. She found a nice teal dress and had two swatches cut from the material it was made from. I got one to match my bowtie and cummerbund to and she took the other to have her shoes dyed. We looked really good together that year. That second year was the year that my best friend and his then girlfriend (to whom he has been happily married for six or eight years now) went to their first prom together. She saw a beautiful dress she had to have, but no one had it in her size and they couldn’t get one in time. The only one they had was a size thirteen, so she bought it and had it altered down. To a size zero. My friend comented that she should have saved the scraps and had them make his tux out of them to save him the rental fees. As it was she had a brain flash and did have her seamstress make a bowtie and cummerbund for him from the scraps so they looked really good together.

I also seem to remember someone’s limo catching fire, but I can’t remember which year that was. We all wondered why they showed up dishevelled, smudged, and smelling slightly of smoke, and they told us. Three couples in that one limo. Not sure if they got a refund or not.