The One That Got Away

Brought to you by prom memory lane.

Prom #2. Spring 1985.

I think of S, the boyfriend with whom I attended my sophomore prom, as the One Who Got Away. Truthfully, though, it wasn't he who got away, it was me. S was willing to stick around, but I ended up breaking up with him — not because he wasn't a swell guy, but because, to my great dismay, I found that I was not in love with him. I wish I had been. I wished it then and I wish it now.

S possessed every quality I wanted in a beau: brains, brawn, humor, honesty, integrity, a loving and supportive family, a sensible car, a sense of adventure, a balanced checkbook, and an appreciation for similar qualities in me. He could even write! He wrote me multi-page, single-spaced letters from college that detailed not only the goings-on around campus, but also his feelings about them. The man communicated his feelings eloquently, and I let him go? Alas, yes. The only thing missing was chemistry, and that was not a shortcoming of S's, but rather of us as a pair, and there wasn't a damn thing either of us could do about it.

We tried, though, and had a lot of fun in the process. After the social isolation involved in dating the Byronic D the year before, I was delighted to hook up with gregarious S and his sports-playing, madrigal-singing, honor roll-making friends. S was salutatorian of his high school class and an entrepreneur who started a programming business in the days when personal computers were still the province of power geeks. Smart is sexy! S and I went to movies, ball games, and parties together, always laughing. Naturally, we went to the prom together, too.

That was the year the prom was postponed on account of snow. Spring is not always kind in the upper Midwest, and that year it was especially turbulent. Huge, wet flakes glopped up the roads so badly that driving was determined to be too dangerous, and nobody wanted to drag their good clothes through the slush anyway. Prom was almost canceled entirely, but that suggestion provoked too great an outcry. So the traditional Saturday night shindig was postponed to a weekday evening the following week.

Yes, a weekday! And that was the death of it. We all still went, of course, but let me tell you, a prom on a Monday just isn't a prom. It isn't even really a party. It feels wrong. Sure, parents set the usual late prom night curfews, and attendance at school the next day was understood to be pretty much optional, but our hearts weren't in it. We were embarrassed to be the lame-o school that had its prom mid-week.

I wore blue that year (it might have been the hoop skirt year) and had planned a cascade of corkscrew curls, a slightly less difficult-to-execute coiffure than the previous year's. However, due to the lingering humidity, my corkscrews looked more like swizzle sticks by the time we made it to the dance — and we're talking less than a quarter of a mile here. Bleck.

But I still had a good time with S, who despite being a lineman on the football team was also a decent dancer who wore his tux with élan. My friends and his mixed well, so I got to dance with some other nice boys, too. I don't remember whether we went to the after-prom party or not.

Ultimately, Prom #2 qualified as OK, not because of my date, but because of the circumstances surrounding it. Mother Nature upstaged our gowns and teenage drama, and we really didn't appreciate it.

S was two years older than me, a junior at the U when I enrolled as a freshman. I'd broken up with him by that time, but we still saw each other on campus, and he dated a girl who lived on my floor in the dorm. They eventually married and are, as far as I know, still married, with at least one child. S became an account after college, but in recent years he has gone back to school for education credentials so he can teach high school math. His students are lucky to have him, as was I.

Photos today? YES

Today around the world: July 28 is Olavsoka Eve in the Faroe Islands. The Faroe Islands, near Northern Europe, are an island group between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, about halfway between Iceland and Norway.