When you’re 16 and shy (which is why your class voted you the “quietest” when you were 17), screwing up the courage to ask a girl to the Junior Prom (which also happens to be the first time you’ve asked a girl out in high school) is a monumental event.  I believe it was the Fall of 1959 in Anchorage, and I was determined that I was going to ask someone who I really cared about–no way was I going to “play it safe.”

One morning in the hallway of AHS, more than two months ahead of the event, I found myself standing beside Ginger Harris and popping the the most difficult question I had asked to that point in my young life–“would you like to go to the Junior Prom with me?”  I may have been on pins and needles when I asked the question; but the emotion I experienced when she said “yes” was a mixture of extreme gratification and pure terror–“Yes?!  Oh my gawd, she said yes!”

You have to understand that the family (one and only) car was a 4-door 1953 Plymouth sedan with dusty gray seats and body paint  a decidedly worn shade of plain blue–much less sexy than a Volkswagen beetle.  It was the kind of car in which my daughters would have asked me to drop them off a block from school to avoid embarrassment (not unlike the tacky, khaki van I actually drove them in during their high school years).   I had just committed to squire the high school girl of my dreams to a fancy formal dance in a pumpkin (or worse), and the humiliation would be all mine!

Failing to think of a more creative solution like renting a limo (my meager funds in those times were derived from vocational pursuits like babysitting), I devised the brilliant plan of ordering seat covers from Fingerhut (a mail order company which I’m sure you’ll all remember–well ahead of its time).  Compared to buying a Red Ryder BB gun, it was like “shooting my eye out.”

The seatcovers arrived about two weeks before the Junior Prom–shiny vinyl in blue and white, and I promptly installed them, proud of myself for having accomplished such a feat at the same time that my friends were regularly impressing upon me how unhandy and inefficient I was (hence their nickname for me–“Didley”).  Believing my reputation was now intact, I overlooked the fact that riding on those seats in the late Fall or early winter in Alaska would be like sleeping on a bed in an ice hotel.

My date with Ginger to the Junior Prom was wonderful.  I learned how gracious and lovely a 16 year old girl could be.  Everyone should be so lucky on a first high school date.

It’s a blessing to still know Ginger after over 50 years, and count her a life-long friend.  There’s no better reason for me to plan on attending our 50th reunion–I’ll ask her to dance, and think of the lovely girl (now a beautiful woman) who set a timid boy at such ease on their date to the Junior Prom.