Prom Night

There's good things and bad things about having four brothers built like linebackers. The good thing is that you only get picked on by bullies once. The bad thing is no boys will dare ask you out. If they survived the interrogation from my brothers then they had to face my Dad. Dad was a medic in the Air Force. Everything was done by regulation and earning the right to date his daughter meant surviving basic training. There wasn't anybody I hated that much.

Each one of the boys presented a different challenge to future boyfriends. The oldest brother was into Baseball. Everything somehow had to relate back to the game of baseball. The youngest grew up and went into the Army. Became a weapon specialist, except the only weapon was him, martial arts, you know. The middle boy was the hot head. They kept a spare set of clothes at the jail for him on weekends. The biggest one I called Bubba. Bubba was like a giant teddy bear. Real laid back and casual until you got him mad or startled him, then things usually got outa hand. So it was real important to stay calm when it came to dealing with my brothers especially Bubba.

Like one time we were living in Montana because Dad got stationed on an isolated tour in Iceland. Now we didn't have a whole lot going for us up there but we did have this little "Mom and Pop" bar where we could go play pool and listen to music. One night I'm in there with my brothers and I get up and go to the bathroom. When I come back the place is empty. Now this is kind of weird cause it's still pretty early, so I go to looking around and I see everybody standing outside. So I go out to see what's happening and over all their heads, I see Bubba. I make my way through the crowd and get up beside him, and I see he's holding this guy around the throat against the building. Which isn't a big thing I guess except this guy isn't as tall as Bubba, and Bubba is real intent on making this guy look him in the eye.

I tapped Bubba on the shoulder and said, "Bubba, what're you doing?"

"I ain't doing nothing," he says, "I'm just talking to this guy."

By now this little guy is making squeaky, whiny noises and his eyes are starting to bulge out of his head.

So I say, "Well, could you talk a little faster cause in a few minutes he ain't gonna be able to hear ya no more." Turns out a man can stand on his tiptoes a lot longer than I thought.

Well in my junior year in high school we were living in Tehran, Iran. Now we didn't have a whole lot going on for us in Iran, but one thing we did have was our own football league. We divided the whole school up into four teams and each team had its own cheerleaders, players, the whole nine yards. We even played ourselves in championship and homecoming games. That was the year I got nominated for a junior princess at the prom.

Now I thought that was kinda weird, so I went to check it out and come to find out every junior girl was nominated for princess since there was only three of us. Well, according to my Mother, I had just won first runner up in Miss America. I explained the whole junior class being nominated thing to her, but she didn't care. If that woman had been on the Titanic, believe me it would have made it's destination. In 1972 and as far away from southern plantations as it is possible to get that short Irish woman came up with a white lace hoop skirt and matching slippers.

I tried to explain about the boy thing and how there wasn't anyone my school could spare to be sacrificed. Didn't phase her a bit. She simply hired one of the GI's in my Dad's outfit to take me. Oh boy. I knew I was in trouble when I went to meet him. He had just won a dart tournament. He was so drunk he thought I was twins and spent the whole night trying to figure out which one of us he was taking to the prom.

Well the big night finally came and I received my game plan from ma. I was to go to the dance, do the ceremonial party and then return home to a nine-course breakfast. I was responsible for supplying all the details to my mother who would be waiting at the door for them.

Now there's some real interesting things about hoop skirts I learned that night. For example, they always look real good on those ladies in the movies while they're standing up, but sitting in them presented a whole other set of problems. By the time we got to the dance, I realized I was going to have to stand by my table the whole night. Just when I had kind of gotten used to standing alone this little bitty guy in a bright gold turban holding a big brass cymbal came up beside me and smacked that cymbal with a mallet.

When my hoop skirt stopped vibrating, I turned around and there on top of his cymbal was a name card with my name on it.

"Please come with me, you have a phone call," he said.

When I got to the phone in the lobby my ma asked, "Did you win yet?"

"No, ma," I said, "I'll call just as soon as they announce the winner."

Well every fifteen minutes that gold turbaned cymbal beater found me wherever I hid. But when he followed me to the ladies room, my patience blew. I walked up to the stage, grabbed the crown, found the nearest junior girl, put the crown on her head and paid her twenty dollars to call my mom.

Next I poured my date into the cab and headed home. I had enough. Ma was real good about everything and listened to the details and even came through on the nine-course breakfast for us. Then I got to thinking about the next part of the date and how I was going to handle it. You know the good night kiss part. Was I supposed to kiss him or was he supposed to kiss me or should I just wake up the boys, let them beat crap out of him and get it over with?

Finally the big moment was here. We stood outside the door under the moonlight. This is it I thought. I looked at him, he looked at me, I looked at him, then his eyes got real big and he ran into the door locking it behind him. Now I thought I figured this part of the date from every angle, and I was pretty confused.

That's when the first goat came around the corner of our house on Kuche Sam. And another, and another. Real quick I knew I was in trouble. See if these goats were going to market, there was going to be a bunch of them coming down our narrow little street, and I knew I needed at least a four foot diameter for my hoop skirt. I didn't have it.

I beat on that door. I begged. I even cried. And those goats just kept coming. Not one, or two but 253 goats passed by my door that morning. I ended up sitting in a flower planter my mother had hung on the windows and filled with camel manure for fertilizer. I just balled. My dress was ruined. My slippers would never again be white and I smelled like a goat herder from "Gone With The Wind." The perfect end to my dating career.

I made up my mind about several things while sitting in that flower box that night. Never again was I going to let my mother fix me up with a blind date. Without a doubt in my mind I decided there was no place in the modern world for hoop skirts. And never again would I feel bad about my brothers. When my date shot in that door and abandoned me, he started screaming. He ran into the first open doorway and into Bubba.