Remember when status in school meant something? Remember when the more popular kids thought of themselves as royalty?
As a senior today, four times older than when I was the other kind of senior, I look back and wonder why popularity, or lack thereof, mattered.
Let me explain:
The other day my wife told me about the frantic preparations for basketball homecoming at the school where she teaches. She said some of the candidates for king and queen are taking matters quite seriously, going into debt to finance a campaign that might enable them to wear a crown for an hour or so.
Now at our school, Immaculate Conception, back in the ‘50s, we didn’t have homecoming goings-on; we merely had misgivings. We did have something like a prom, in which the biggest fund-raisers were lauded and lorded during their 15 minutes of fame.
A Russian novel, Anna Karenina, concerns Anna, by far the most beautiful of the litter, who never got an invitation to dance the mazurka at the grand ball. Now how could this gross miscarriage of protocol have happened? Simple: Every eligible young man simply assumed he’d have no chance at being accepted. Why? Well, because every other man would have already asked her.
As a result, nobody did. Anna sat that one out.
We had our own Anna Karenina at I.C. School, back in the days when campaigning for prom king or queen meant raising funds. But it also entailed lots of work. There were posters to be printed, decorated and posted, newspaper articles to be published, photos to be taken, doors to be knocked on soliciting support and money, and jars to be taken to neighborhood businesses, for customers to drop in a few pennies.
Our own Anna K. charmed and lured. And she hinted a lot, intimating that one of us boys in high school might just get the privilege of taking her to the big dance. Now please realize that mid-century Las Vegas was different from today. Things were proper. In fact, upon enrolling at I.C. School, we virtually promised the following:
- Thou shalt happily participate in the Christmas pageant, whose rehearsals beginneth the first week of school;
- Under pain of ex-communication thou shalt gleefully attend all proms;
- Thou shalt attend proms even if with thy sister (that never happened in our family).
In addition, there was a dress code: Girls wear formals; gents wear a suit, tie, white shirt and polished shoes. No tattoos, piercings or tongue studs.
Monday’s Albuquerque Journal, by the way, includes an article, with photos, about a fairly common style of dress in which young people wear their pajama bottoms to town, school, to Walmart. That manner of dress would have purchased us a non-stop ticket to the nether world.
But back to the hinting Anna K.’s needing my help, I assume because I was the one with a camera and the ability to develop pictures, Anna cast a line: “Arthur, how would you like to take me to the prom?” My biggest hesitation was the expense. You see, post-prom activities didn’t involve things like parking somewhere; rather, the routine was the obligatory post-prom meal at the Home Cafe, on Grand, the only 24-hour restaurant in town.
A couple of burgers might have totalled all of a dollar. On a different date, I once needed to borrow money to pay for my date’s meal. As girls then were wont to do, this one looked over the menu, and as a joke — as all girls used to do — she said, “I think I’ll order the most expensive item: a sirloin steak.” I believe the wait-person knew my date was merely joshing, but ordered it for Julia anyway, possibly securing for herself a bigger tip.
I wanted to avoid bankruptcy and therefore hesitated in replying to Anna K. But yet, escorting such a looker almost outweighed the need for me hunt and redeem empty pop bottles for extra cash.
No matter: by the end of the school day, several other boys had been teased about the faux invitation.
One other reason I hesitated to commit to being Anna K.’s escort was that I just knew she’d find a last-second excuse for breaking the date. She’d probably conjure up some kind of fable that included 1) an unexpected visit from a male cousin none of us knew, 2) an awkward moment in which she says, “As long as you’re here, would you like to go to the prom with me?” 3) A non-functioning phone that prevents her from calling me (and the rest of the entire Seventh Fleet of invitees) to explain that she’s taking her cousin to the prom, strictly as a courtesy.
So, guess what. The same game is in the making during this race for the GOP nomination for president. Notice that Mitt Romney dropped a few names.
Susana Martinez, our GOP governor, was included in the list of those who might get selected as Romney’s running mate, as were governors in Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina.
But really now, how naive must people be to buy that variation of “I might take you to the prom” game? Yes, it’s flattering for Martinez to have been among the stellar cast of “maybes,” but, amigos, let’s just dream on.
Clear back to my youth, I recall reports of Gov. Edwin L. Mechem being “considered as a vice-presidential running mate.” The same bit of political titillation grazed former governors Jack Campbell, Jerry Apodaca and others. It’s flattering and often designed to pique interest of minorities, but it’s usually insincere, a tokenism.
Martinez has already declared she’s not interested in running for vice president.
Good. That way she needn’t quit her day job.