Last night was our
school’s prom. I, like most senior guys, did not really want to go, especially
because the girl I wanted to take was already going with her boyfriend. But,
like anyone who thinks about the future would do, I decided to go so I don’t regret
NOT going later down the road.
Things went fine. I
found a group and got a ticket and all. The Pre-Prom stuff was fun and
everything. Until my button broke. I was just standing there, minding my own
business, when life decided to strike. The button on my suit jacket broke off.
I had not been messing with it. The jacket was not extremely tight. It just
fell off.
So, not wanting to look
like a fool with a missing button, I improvised and fixed the button with a
paper clip.
Upon arriving to prom,
I realized just how evil Life’s little prank had been. Because my button was
broken and held together with a paper clip, I did not want to turn my jacket in
to the check-in booth.
A short while later,
here I was, standing in the middle of a gym that didn’t look like a gym,
pretending to dance so my friends would stop hassling me, when suddenly life threw
the worst part of the whole thing at me.
A slow song came on.
Now, slow songs always
make me feel lonely and sad, but when they are played incredibly loud and there
are about 12,000 couples surrounding you, slow-dancing to the song, it’s about
a bazillion times worse.
With one song, Life had
totally killed any chance of me feeling up to dancing the rest of the night.
So I spent the next
three hours standing near the wall with another non-dancer, getting kicks by
waiting till someone walked by and then speaking into our cufflinks, saying
something like, “He just passed by.”
This normally is quite
entertaining; however, when the person can’t hear you say it, and therefore
have no reaction, it gets boring quite rapidly.
Two and a half hours
after starting the whole “standing” business, the girl that I had wanted to
take to prom came up to me. She had not been around when I had been
fake-dancing, so to her, I had just been standing there all evening. A slow
song had just started and she asked me, “Would you dance with a girl…”
I immediately thought
Life had decided to apologize for being such a jerk. Unfortunately, reality
struck when she finished the sentence.
“…for me?”
Great. The girl I have feelings for wants me to
dance with a girl I don’t know.
It was even worse when
I found out I do know the girl, just
not that well.
The worst part of the
situation, however, was the fact that the girl I like was about two feet away, slow
dancing with her boyfriend, who kept leaning down and trying to neck with her.
Life had done it again.
Here I was, slow
dancing with a girl I hardly knew while the girl I love is a few feet away,
being necked by her boyfriend.
As soon as the song was
done, I vanished. I found a comfortable spot by the wall where I stayed for the
rest of the night.
At the end of prom, as I was waiting for the guy I was
supposed to take home, I started thinking about my life, which was a big
mistake. I basically played my entire love life out in my head all at once,
which should have thrown me into a suicidal state.
Lucky for me, I don’t want to let Life win that easily.
Here is the story that ran through my head:
WARNING: THIS STORY MAY CAUSE TEARS, SORROW, AND DEPRESSION
All my life I had been a bachelor, and proud of it.
That changed when I got to High School and met a girl, who I
will refrain from naming in case this blog goes viral. Freshman year, I fell
head-over-heals for her.
Unfortunately, I was plagued with a case of Shyness that was
so bad, I could hardly speak to people I just kind of knew, let alone a girl I
was in love with.
It took me till junior year to really start talking to her.
And by the time I finally had worked up the insanity and courage to ask her
out, junior year was over and she was out of my life for the summer.
When we came back to school our senior year, she had a
boyfriend.
Her last boyfriend had ended the relationship as only a jerk
would do. He asked her to prom, waited till she had her dress, and then dumped
her. She started a protest against boys (although she let me join the protest
too). By the time she finally started
coming back to the point of starting new relationships, my time was up.
I was hoping this relationship would be similar (although
less detrimental to her emotional and mental attitude towards men.)
Unfortunately, it is still going strong. I keep getting
hints that they might possibly break
up, but that break up will probably not be until after graduation when I
probably will never see her again.
Looking back over the past three years and three months that
I have loved her, I realize that every time I asked “How’s it going?” or “What’s
up?” or “How was your weekend?” (at least one of which I would ask at least
once every day) what I really was saying was “I love you.” It was kind of the
same principle of “As you wish” in The Princess Bride.
And the hardest part is that those three years are all for
naught now. Any time I had an open opportunity, I had no nerves. When I finally
got the nerves, I didn’t get any opportunity at all.
