{"id":52,"date":"2010-04-11T21:07:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T05:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/?p=52"},"modified":"2011-05-19T18:46:45","modified_gmt":"2011-05-20T02:46:45","slug":"my-junior-prom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/my-junior-prom\/","title":{"rendered":"My Junior Prom"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 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.”<\/p>\n

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?”\u00a0 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?!\u00a0 Oh my gawd, she said yes!”<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 a decidedly worn shade of plain blue–much less sexy than a Volkswagen beetle.\u00a0 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).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I 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!<\/p>\n

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).\u00a0 Compared to buying a Red Ryder BB gun, it was like “shooting my eye out.”<\/p>\n

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”).\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

My date with Ginger to the Junior Prom was wonderful.\u00a0 I learned how gracious and lovely a 16 year old girl could be.\u00a0\u00a0Everyone should be so lucky on a first high school date.<\/p>\n

It’s a blessing to still know Ginger after over 50 years, and count her a life-long friend.\u00a0 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\u00a0a\u00a0timid boy at such ease on their date to the Junior Prom.<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0 I believe it was the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memories","category-photos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahs61.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}