The Senior Prom

By Jerry Mack Grubbs

The events leading up to this date started months earlier. I actually didn't ask Karen to the senior prom. We had been dating exclusively since the beginning of our sophomore year and some things were just understood between us. At least that's the way it was until the summer of 1963.

That summer the Cobb family moved into the house next door to Karen's home on Avalon Drive. Their son Glenn was a year younger than us. As Karen and I dated through the summer, Glenn's name surfaced more and more. I became agitated at the mere mention of his name. I knew that it was jealousy on my part that Glenn had daily access to my girlfriend.  My feelings of jealousy were not so much directed against Glenn, I didn't even know him other than by sight. The ups and downs of my relationship with Karen had always been out in the open.  But I lived across town and our time together was limited to a couple of times a week during the summer.  The only reason I was excited for school to start was because I would get to see her more often.

Summer ended and the new school year began. School activities and football games were in full swing. Life at Longview High School seemed normal on the outside but inwardly I knew something had changed. Our lives were on autopilot which included plans for the senior prom. We laughed and joked with classmates and friends. The laughing and joking was only skin deep for me. There was an unseen enemy invading the calm of my life but I couldn't identify it much less put a name on it. I could only wait and let life unfold.

My life didn't unfold, it unraveled. You could say that my train derailed.  My train ride began in biology class my sophomore year when a skinny little blonde traded places with my lab partner and began sitting next to me the first week of school. If it was a setup I didn't resist. You have to know you are being setup before you can resist or go along with a plan. I was actually too naive to even realize what was going on. A couple of weeks after the skinny blonde became my lab partner I still wasn't getting the picture.

My future wasn't in the hands of fate; Karen was leading this military maneuver and I wasn't even aware that I had been drafted although her mother would one day save me from the real draft.  Plans were put in place to insure that I would get a clear picture of the battlefield. My friend Charles Hineman was dating Karen's best friend Leslie Duffel. Leslie asked Charles to tell me that my biology lab partner would say yes if I asked her out on a date. I remember asking Charles, "How do you know that?" His response was typical, "Are you stupid. She sits by you in biology and English plus she has traded lockers so her locker is right across the hall from yours." It now made sense why I had been running into her so much. I finally mustered the courage to ask her on a date and our emotional train pulled out of the station, picked up speed, and Karen and I traveled together along the curves and straight stretches of high school life. We had traveled a long way since those early sophomore days but Karen decided to change trains soon after the beginning of our senior year.

For her it was like stepping off one train and onto another. The train she boarded was ridden by her next door neighbor, Glenn Cobb.  From hindsight it was easy to understand what had happened. She said all the right things; even shed a few tears of sadness that our journey was over. It is easier to be gracious when you aren't the one left at the train station. Karen assured me that we would always be good friends but our life together had become boring. I didn't ask any questions, I just listened. She said that I was also too predictable, I didn't appreciate her and I often chose to be with my friends instead of her. I'm sure all those things were true. By the time she was through I wondered why she had ever gone out with me in the first place. Even if my brain had been encased in cement, I would have gotten the picture this time. I didn't need to hear anymore. Like an injured animal, I licked my wounds in the privacy of my own mind and dropped a curtain over my heart to protect it.  It took me a while before I realized that some people need to build a case against you so their actions are your fault.

I had no conversations with Karen until several weeks later. With the casualness of a princess addressing one of her subjects she said, "Jerry, I thought I should let you know the color of my prom dress." I didn't answer her. I was too surprised to utter a response. It had never entered my mind that we were still going to the senior prom. "You're still taking me to the prom aren't you?" she asked. "You can drop dead if you think I am going anywhere with you," I said. "You know I have always planned to go to the prom with you," she replied. "When we talked about the prom you were dating me, not someone else. Get Glenn to take you if you want to go to the prom," I said. "I can't go with Glenn. He had already asked someone else before we started going steady," she said as her voice raised a few notches. "Raise your voice if you want, I'm not going to the senior prom with you or anyone else," I said. I walked away, shaking my head and wondering if my pain would ever end.

Well, my pain wasn't going to end soon. After school I went to work at the Salad Bowl Restaurant located in the Holiday Inn Motel on Highway 80. The restaurant closed at eleven but it took us until midnight to get everything cleaned up and ready for the next day. It only took about twenty minutes to walk home. I resisted having mother pick me up after work because I was fearful that she would eventually make me quit because of the inconvenience of the hour. She was always up when I came in the door and would have something for me to eat although I had already eaten at the restaurant. Mother said that she had something to discuss with me. It had not occurred to me that Karen or her mom would call and discuss the prom with my mother.

I no longer remember who placed the call to mom but it didn't matter. Mother thought it was my duty to take Karen to the prom. It wasn't right for a senior to not be able to attend her last prom of high school, besides she was one of the ladies in waiting, whatever that meant. I told mother that I didn't care if Karen was a lady in waiting or how long Karen had to wait. She could ground me, punish me any way she could dream up, I was not taking Karen to the prom. I think I was enjoying some sadistic pleasure in this dilemma that my old girlfriend had wedged herself into. She got herself in the crack. She could get herself out. It wasn't my problem.

Wasn't my problem? My problems were just beginning. I thought my train derailment when she gave me all the reasons why she was bringing our relationship to an end was the last scene, the closing act of this painful play. The next call was from Karen's mother. She wanted me to drop by her insurance office for a chat. I knew what that meant. We met at her office when we were going to discuss the skinny little blonde without her being present. I knew Karen had put her up to this little discussion and I wasn't happy but I thought too much of this lady to say no. Was this pain ever going to end?

Apparently not yet. Karen's mom and my mother shared the same name. They also shared the same opinion that I should take Karen to the prom. I could understand Karen's mother siding with her but I was puzzled why my own mother would want to subject me to the pain and humiliation of doing this.  It was asking too much to take someone whom I deeply cared for to the prom while all along she would be wishing that she could be with her new Mister Right. The more these two women pressed me the more stubborn I became. If Karen was panicking, I didn't care. If she was embarrassed by all the discussion of her missing the senior prom, it was not my problem. I was nursing a wounded heart and that heart just needed to be left alone. My friend Charles Hineman thought it was the funniest thing. His girlfriend Leslie Duffel had stiffed him months earlier and he was now over the hump and able to take a deep breath without feeling like he was going to break in half. I knew I would get over the hump too if people would just leave me alone.

But mom knew that leaving me alone wouldn't get Karen to the prom. She had a long talk with me about whether I was going to be a boy or a man. She pulled several cards out of the deck: the shame card, the guilt card, etc. I didn't budge. Mother knew where my stubborn streak originated and some of it was coursing through her own veins. She spoke of doing the right thing even when it was hard. I battled her over the subject of what the right thing was. When all else had failed mother asked me to pray about it and promised that she would not bother me anymore about the subject if I would agree to follow the promptings I felt. I agreed. I didn't have to worry. I knew I was in the right.

But I still had a problem. Being right doesn't make you good. Being right doesn't place you above the responsibility to extend charity. If you withhold charity when it is within your power to extend it, don't count on charity when you are in need of it. Mother knew me better than I knew myself. She taught me these things from my youth. I just buried them somewhere down deep and mom knew in the quiet moments of my mind I would rediscover them.

Karen's mother called and asked for a second meeting with me. She could usually point out things in a way that I hadn't thought of before. She explained that she wasn't siding with Karen. She said, "I love you like a son and I love my daughter. I don't want to see either one of you hurt. Karen is just following her heart. What are you following, Jerry?" Her question was like a revelation to me. I had already decided to take Karen to the prom because it was what my heart told me to do. But now I would take her as a man, not a boy. I would take her out of love, not out of duty, not because it was the right thing to do but because it was a good thing to do.

Karen looked beautiful that night. I treated her with tenderness. I opened the car door for her but she didn't slide over next to me as I got in. That part of our lives had changed. At the prom we danced cordially and traded partners with other couples. I'm sure that Glenn found her and they danced some but I didn't watch for her or require anything special of her. My arrangement was to take her to the prom itself, not to the rest of the all night activities. Leaving the dance, as we approached her home Karen asked if I would like to go somewhere and talk for a while. I declined. I thought about saying something catty like, "I don't think Glenn would like that," but I didn't. "Would you do it for me?" she asked. "Do what?" I asked. "Go somewhere so that we can talk for a few minutes," she said. "Yes," I said.

I drove to a spot near her home that we had visited often at the close of a date. It was awkward at first. All we had shared over the years seemed to be walled off from us like it had been two other people and we were just watching memories of them from a distance. She leaned over to give me a kiss but I touched my hand to her lips. She said that she had something serious to discuss with me. "I've heard that you have been seeing Susie. You know what kind of reputation she has. I'm not interested in second-hand merchandise. If you expect us to ever get married you better stop spending time with her," she said. I hadn't been out with Susie or anyone else. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I wanted to say, "I'll date whomever I please, but I didn't. I just looked at her, cranked the car and drove her home.

I gave her mom a hug as we entered the house. We visited for a few minutes and talked about the events of the dance. The look her mother gave me as I turned to leave was worth every minute of that evening I had spent with the skinny little blonde I met in biology long ago. I excused myself and headed home. I was glad that I did it and I was glad it was over. Looking back on it, both my mom and Karen's mom were right. . .taking her to the prom was the right thing to do but it wasn't easy. And sometimes we make things harder than they need to be. Maybe I was slowly and painfully becoming a man.