Still the Night

Over the past few days multiple people have requested that I finish my prom story. Ok, it was two people but that technically counts as a multiple. So sit back and relax, since this story is going to take awhile. Oh, and everything is this story actually is true.


There are a few things that I have learned in life. Like if you are going to play the slot machines you might as well just set your wallet on fire, the enjoyment level is pretty much the same. And that no matter how much you would like it to be true, your life will never resemble that of a character out of a romantic comedy. But every once in awhile, especially when I am about to graduate, it comes surprisingly close.

Turn the wayback machine fifteen years to spring of 1991. It was a simpler time when Jim Carrey was known as the dude who played Fire Marshal Bill on In Living Color. When kids on skateboards were still called punks and menaces to society as opposed to entrepreneurial extreme athletes. And when your chart topping hits for this week included the Divinyls “I Touch Myself”, Extreme’s “More than Words” and Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up.”

(Again, I can never bring myself to admit that the music of my youth was the best ever.)

If you focused the wayback machine on the near suburbs of Chicago you would find a Young EC finishing off high school. As I said before, I wasn’t popular but I was really well known and liked. And as we got closer and closer to the end of high school I was becoming more and more outspoken, writing little comedy sketches about life and sharing them with people (I so wish that the net existed back then, my life would have been so different) and spending my weekend talking to a cute blonde haired girl in Minnesota who I thought the world of. And when the idea of who to ask to the prom came up I thought about her and…

Life isn’t a romantic comedy and seventeen year olds have a heck of a time affording plane tickets. In some parallel life that is the direction this story takes.

Instead, we find Young EC sitting in study hall during the last period of the day. As a senior Young EC has pretty free reign of the place and spends study hall sitting in the back of the library, which since this is a catholic school is actually a converted chapel. I’d typically be found in the back reading the latest issue of Rolling Stone because, well, that was basically the edgiest material that you could find in a converted chapel. So I was sitting there one day talking with a few people when Mr. Riberdy, my English teacher/mentor showed up. I’ve written about him before, if I had to list the five people who most influenced who I am he makes the list without a doubt. He was the first person who grabbed me and said, “You have so much to offer people, speak up and show them who you are.”

The discussion turned to prom and Riberdy went, “Hey Bart, do you have a date yet?” (Side note: my nickname in high school was Bart, which predated Bart Simpson by two years. I won’t even start to explain it.) I answered no and we started listing who was available and the name Kathy Robinson came up. And I said, “Yeah, I was thinking about asking her.” And then Riberdy’s eyes lit up.

“What class is she in right now?”
“Spanish, why?”
“Get up Bart, were doing this now.”
“What…” at which point he grabs me by the collar and starts dragging me toward the door. We go down a flight of stairs (with my friend Mike following behind as a rear guard). He walks to the classroom, I’m in the hallway, and Mike decides to go to the water fountain to have a drink.

(Riberdy sticks his head in the doorway) “Hi, can I speak to Kathy for a minute.”
“Uh sure”
(She walks out and Riberdy points her in my direction)

“Hi Chris”
“Hi Kathy, uh I know this is weird but would you like to go to prom with me?”
“Uh sure.”

I really wish I remembered the whole conversation because all I know is that she had this look of stunned disbelief on her face. It definitely wasn’t what she expected when she walked into class that afternoon. What I do remember is Mike nearly drowning because he literally spent five minutes acting like he was taking a drink at the water fountain in order to hear everything.

(Time for another side note: It might not read that way, but I really did like Kathy. She was extremely smart and nice and cute in a way that I got and not too many other people did. If I hadn’t been as shy as I was, I would have gotten to know her much better before this moment in the story.)

The weeks to prom move by at a blistering pace. I end up meeting up with the cute blonde haired girl from Minnesota at the Museum of Science and Industry while she is in town on a class trip. Had a great time with her and later she told me that I had a puzzling expression on my face as we said goodbye. The truth was (and still is) that I saw one path that I could travel in life, one that possibly could have resulted in my being happier than I would ever have a right being, walk away and I didn’t know how to stop it. I’m not sure if you are supposed to realize at seventeen that life is never going to make any sense. Or that those moments will happen over and over again.

Anyway, Riberdy lets me know that he is chaperoning the prom and to be ready because he has one more surprise left in store for me. Kathy and I do the usual prom coordination things (what color is your dress, whose table are we going to sit at, what are we doing afterwards). You know, all of those things that take on monumental proportions when you are seventeen but now seem like the most trivial aspects of life. But the big day arrives and Young EC, after avoiding every school dance up until now, is actually going to prom.

I know that we met up at someone’s house so that the parents could take pictures. I remember that I almost forgot Kathy’s corsage and that she did actually forget mine, which caused people to go out into the back garden and build me a boutonniere. I know that I looked damn good in a tux and that Kathy was as cool and effortless as always. And I was relatively pleased that I was getting high fives for showing up.

The night goes on and we have a great time and we get to the point that they are announcing the prom court. People start being named and things are fun and low key and then they announce “The next couple is Chris (insert my last name here) and Erin Ryan”. And then a huge cheer goes up as I look over at Riberdy and he gives me the thumbs up sign. See, Riberdy taught English for the juniors and he instructed them to vote for me and since I knew them as well and they also thought I was a pretty cool, if shy, kid they worked to stuff the ballot box in my favor. Oh, and I had had a crush on Erin since freshman year. It was rather surreal as Erin and I couldn’t stop laughing and I just wondered why I waited this long to come out of my shell.

It’s a nice movie plot, isn’t it? The shy kid who is liked but isn’t popular has a teacher take him under his wing, gets him a date for prom and he is named prom king with his freshman year crush as queen? Well, I wasn’t named prom king. And life isn’t a movie.

Because in the end Erin and I had a few laughs and that was it. And I hung out with Kathy a little over the summer but we fell out of touch pretty quickly. The last time I saw her was when I randomly ran into her on the Illinois quad when she was on campus for a conference and we talked for five minutes and that was it. And I lost touch with the blonde haired girl from Minnesota, miraculously got back in touch with her several years later, made one grand gesture and then lost touch again and realized that she will now only be remembered as the dedication line in my first novel (because I keep my promises). So I missed out on the big romantic ending. But for one moment, my life was worthy of the big screen and not too many people get to experience that and I’ve had it happen twice. But the second one is a story for another day.