The High School Prom Bid Ticket
Looking back on our lives lived, we have stories we like to tell. Most are boring and, with filtered memory, make us appear well.
Then there are stories afterwards we wish we didn’t tell. Although more interesting, they reveal too much and are told to outdo another’s stupidity tale or after the third drink.
I’m not talking about these.
I’m talking about memories stuffed in the bottom of our subconscious well, the recollection niches too painful to even let your mind dwell.
Her name was Judy. She’d transferred from afar as a sophomore to Santa Clara High. Knowing none, she was free of prior grade and intermediate school clique baggage, a fresh girl school flower.
I, a junior, had transferred to Santa Clara High as a sophomore too, but not from afar. I knew those from my neighborhood or who went directly from Saint Clare’s grade school to Santa Clara High School. I’d missed my freshman year due to going to a Catholic college prep school, Bellarmine. I hated it and transferred to Santa Clara as a sophomore.
By my junior year, I’d been accepted into an outer orbit of Santa Clara’s “in” male school clique due to playing football, taking wood shop and my 53 Chevy convertible.
My biggest teenage insecurity, however, was not my school clique status. It was girls. I had no sisters and the closest female cousin was 3,000 miles distant.
Interest in girls had flared up in my last years at Saint Clare’s. It was a preliminary exploration of the mysterious female gender sparked by puberty’s beginning, an interest the nuns suppressed with warnings of impure thought, and the girl’s modest uniforms. Bellarmine was an all-boy school.
Santa Clara High School was a new world. Girls dressed to impress, changed attire to match the season, and a few overtly adorned themselves to sexually encourage impure thoughts. They tested the limits of the school’s skirt hem height, measured décor in inches from knees, at the front office.
Many were pretty, some beautiful and all interesting. Up close they smelled wonderful. The problem was, I didn’t know what or who they were, mysterious unknown entities, desperately wanted, but of uncertain access..
Saint Clare’s and Bellarmine had confused me of what female was. There were the beatified saints, images of piety, topped by the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Madonna, matronly beauty on a pedestal. By eighth grade, however, raging hormones had complicated the Madonna. A shift occurred to interest in Mary Magdalen, the harlot deposit for wanton, impure thoughts.
Confounding my girls was a personal character flaw, pride. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I assumed superiority over others, not just the obvious weaker but to everyone. While wanting to charge the female line, I was terrified of rebuke. I wanted feminine quality, a girl exhibiting the best of Madonna and Mary Magdalen who would accept me as Sir Lancelot.
There are important event’s one must confront traveling through life that must be faced. In High School, one is the Junior Prom. To remain in, if only on the outer edge of the “in” clique, I needed to attend the Junior Prom. I needed a formal date with a wonderful, beautiful, sweet-smelling girl. She needed not be a cheerleader but “respectable” beautiful to compliment my self-image.
There was Judy. She was under the good-looking girl radar, a beautiful sleeper, unnoticed by the big male competition. Dark Irish, she had long black hair and watery blue eyes which her clear, unblemished white skin set in contrast. About 5 foot five, dark curls caressed the nape of her neck. She wasn’t pretty, she was beautiful.
She wasn’t in any of my classes, a corridor passerby, that required my stopping and asking for a phone number, which was willing given. I called her from the car lot office I worked at in the evenings. At the car lot, I camouflaged car blemishes to avoid purchaser notice as instructed by the lot’s owner. I even got caught by him when he unexpectedly returned one evening, with my feet on his desk, acting the big shot as I attempted clever conversation with Judy.
Building up courage, sniffing out potential response to avoid a rejection, on thethird call I asked her to go to the prom with me. She said YES!
Going to the prom was a big expense for us both. I purchased the $32 bid ticket admission, ($300 in today’s money), bought her a corsage, rented a tux and with a couple of friends made reservations at the Hawaiian Gardens Restaurant, the big time for high school prom goers.
My 53 Chevy convertible required through cleaning and waxing, even some hidden blemishes removed at the car lot. My expense and hassles were nothing compared to her gown, shoes and hair expenditures and preparations.
The big Friday night came. Bathed, shaved, and tux attired, I got my wallet, checked to see there was $100 in $20, got my car keys and opened my top dresser drawer, the one I threw important stuff into.
The prom bid ticket was not there.
I looked in another drawer, then another, by the time I finished searching the bedroom looked like a whirlwind had hit. It had. Next came the car. I didn’t climb under it but came close to doing it. Every crevasse, storage space, and below seat was visited, time and again, but to no avail. Eventually it was time to pick up Judy, late, or not at all. I didn’t have the bid ticket. I left without it.
Judy opened the door. The parents insisted on pictures. I bluffed my way forward, mind racing with hopeful lies to myself. The big one, the final one, was we’d simply be let in.
I mean, who would go to the prom if they hadn’t bought the bid? Insanity, no one would. Perhaps they didn’t even ask for a bid at the door.
Other hopes did spring to mind.
Yes! It must be in my school locker! That’s it, I forgot to bring it home.
There were eight of us seated at a Hawaiian Gardens table. It was a warm Fall evening and Hawaiian Gardens kept a semi outdoor décor as if really in Hawaii. The four couples were in a jovial mood. Two males were friends since second grade, a relaxing evening except for me. I knew something ugly was coming, something only me could be so stupid to let happen, to not have a prom bid ticket at the door.
Increasing my agony was Judy. At the dinner table she had a touch of mirth, bending her beauty a little from the center point of the Madonna image to a touch of wanton Mary Magdalen, the perfect blend of femineity. Every glance at her increased my stupidity guilt.
With the dessert plates removed, the checks paid, we scrambled out to the evening and got in our cars, back when the door was always opened first for the girl. Inside, Judy scooted over and unlocked the driver’s door for me. Parked near the school auditorium, we walked to the doors fate, she unconcerned, me doomed.
At the entrance, peeking inside, the auditorium was beautifully decorated, documentation the hefty bid ticket price money was aptly spent. The band’s music played clear. The Home Economics teacher guarding the entrance, one I knew nothing about, asked for my bid ticket. What could I say? I couldn’t say stolen, I had no suspect. I could only reply,
“I lost it.”
This is where a minor thing determines one’s fate. I don’t know the actual odds, but I’d guess half of the persons in that position would look us over and would say
“Bring it next time!”,
Or “See me Monday!”
At least say, “Then you must still pay the bid price!” which I had money to cover.
But fate betrayed me.
The Home Economics teacher was too unsure of her position in the school hierarchy to make a decision, an unprecedented one. She simply replied,
“Wait, until I get those in line in and then I’ll see if there is something we can do.”
So, it started, we stood by the door as the others trooped in, the girls all dressed in beautiful gowns with corsages while Judy sat on a folding chair brought out for her, uncertain but embarrassed of what fate had delt her.
Eventually the vice principal showed up. He was a good man, but things had escalated making his decision more formal. He inquired in detail where my prom bid could have been mislaid. The only two options I could think of were my football locker or school corridor locker.
So, the quest began, the long walk to the football field and locker room, desperate search through stinky, sweaty football gear, then the opening of the school and the march to my corridor locker and it disembowelment.
After shifting through the last of my English papers, sanity returned to the vice principal.
“Jim, there’s a beautiful girl out there all dressed up waiting to dance.
“Go dance with her!”
The prom was a little more than half over. Everyone in school knew now who Judy was, the beautiful sophomore girl abandoned at the prom’s entrance. The males had discovered Santa Clara’s beautiful hidden gem.
The prom over, we drove home in silence. What was there to say? I walked her to the door, The porch light was on. I wanted to kiss her, wanted to do more, say more but simply said,
“I’m sorry.”
And walked away.
I never called her again, veered to another path if she was coming down the corridor, shut the experience out of my mind, buried it all deep into a memory well and sealed the lid.
Judy’s beauty was discovered, and soon she had a steady boyfriend, one she married on graduation. They’re still married 63 years later and have a wonderful family. She wasn’t a Madonna or Mary Magdalen of my mind. Instead she was a beautiful high school girl who became a beautiful wife, mother and now grandmother.
I’ve gone to my 20-, 30-, 40- and 50-year high school reunions. Judy has always been the most beautiful woman there, matched only by my wife. She always comes to my table and kisses me, in front of her husband and my wife, for the lost kiss under her porch light of our prom night.
She told my wife; I’d lost the high school prom bid ticket.
My wife replied,
“That sounds like Jim alright!”
Author Notes: And they lived happily ever after married to another.
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United States • 80 years old