Worst Date Ever

I graduated high school in Minneapolis in 1992. Just before I finished, I went to my first prom and it turned out to be my worst date ever; my date sent me home so she could go with another man.

The girl who asked me to the prom (I know that's a bit untraditional) had said she loved me many times; she even wrote it in my notebook, and in different languages too!

I wasn't that impressed though because she was in love with nearly everyone at the school, including most of my friends. In fact, I was okay with it. I told her that I liked her a lot so why should I worry that she seemed to love lots of people?

On prom night, after dinner together, we went to a downtown hotel for the prom. It was a three-school prom, quite large, and none of our friends from Central High were there. The Beatles cover band, Beatles Forever, were playing. They came out in different costumes representing different Beatles "eras"; skinny ties and mop tops for early Beatles and wigs and beards for later Beatles. The performance made one want the real Beatles, not the cover band, and since the real Beatles were nowhere in sight, it got boring fast. My date decided we would have more fun if we changed locales.

She suggested we go to a theater where a touring juggling troupe was performing. She had known they were playing but had failed to tell me about her desires. The dull prom gave her an opportunity to reveal to me her real interest.

When we arrived at the theater, my date found one of the jugglers. She had failed to tell me that she knew them! Not well, but enough to say "remember me?" and start a conversation. She got a drink and flirted shamelessly with the juggler. After the intermission, while he was juggling, she got drunker and drunker. Excusing herself to the juggler, she dragged me outside and threw up on the sidewalk. Soon she confessed to me her deep love for the juggler. She told me she was done with me and that I should go home because she was planning to spend the night with the juggler.

I wasn't happy to be dropped for another man, but I thought it was a good idea to get some distance between myself and a sloppy drunk who was vomiting on the sidewalk and throwing herself at a juggler. I left.

There is a coda to this story. Twenty years after this prom, I heard from my date again by email. She had been writing an autobiography and wanted me to read it. Being curious (and also being a bit of a literary critic), I obliged. The autobiography began after she left high school, so I wasn't in it, but the juggler had turned up in her life again more than ten years after prom. He is now her second husband; she is still married to the first (a conservative Christian) and is also married to the juggler's first wife.