Iron Mountain ski jump

Iron Mountain ski jump

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

When Bad Proms Happen to Good People

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…


The Question of Theodicy: Why does God allow evil, like tornadoes and wars and high school proms?


I think it was Mike who first told me that I was taking Judith to the prom at a place I’ll call Fort McCracken, 17 miles from our town. I had never heard of her.


Judith was the only child in a wealthy family. Her father was a judge. Her parents had given her a new Chrysler convertible at the start of her junior year. That guaranteed that no Fort McCracken boy would date her, since no Fort McCracken boy had a car that could compete. So when prom time came that year, she was dateless.


Her mother was a friend of Ann’s mother. Ann was in my high school class. Judith’s mother told Ann’s mother of the problem. Ann’s mother asked what Judith was interested in.


“Journalism. She’s editor of the school newspaper.”


“Have I got a deal for you,” said Ann’s mother. “My daughter is in class with the editor of our school newspaper. He’s a nice boy.”


That’s the curse mothers always put on me: He’s a nice boy.


So Ann’s mother and Judith’s mother decided I would take Judith to the prom. The irony is that I was further out of my league than any boy in Fort McCracken.


I had no car and no suit, so the mothers arranged for my friend Mike, who was dating Ann, to get invitations to their prom, too, and my sister, who had graduated and was working fulltime, bought me a suit, and a pink and gray tie, which I still have. [You don’t outgrow ties.] Ann’s mother, of course, knew all about Judith’s dress, so she bought a corsage that would coordinate with it.


Mike and Ann drove down the gravel roads to our farm and I rode to Fort McCracken in the back seat of Mike’s two-door hardtop Pontiac, with Judith’s corsage in the front seat beside Ann. When we arrived at Judith’s house, it was almost dark. Ann scrunched up toward the dashboard and I pushed the seat forward to get out, thus crushing the corsage.


It was a big house, fronted by a high porch with a dim light. I carried the crushed corsage up the long walk and climbed the creaking steps to the shadowed front door. I knocked. The door opened. A classy blond girl in a formal stood there. I spoke one of the best opening lines in the annals of blind prom dates: “It looks like I’ve come to the right place.”


I pushed the crushed corsage at her. She looked at it and was speechless. An older blond appeared over her shoulder, took the corsage away to the kitchen, where she performed voodoo on it. Judith and I stood there and tried not to look at each other. “That’s my father,” she said, indicating a man sitting in a dark corner of the living room, peeling an apple, with a butcher knife, one long peel sliding off the apple with surgical precision. He didn’t say anything.


Judith’s mother returned with the corsage, and taking no chances that her daughter might get crushed, too, pinned it on Judith herself. She handed Judith a boutonniere. Judith tried to slip it through the button-hole of my new lapel. It wouldn’t go. The mother tried. “It’s not cut,” she said. [What farm boy knows you have to slit the buttonhole in a new suit yourself?]


“I’ll take care of him,” her father said, jumping up and advancing on me with the butcher knife. He grabbed my lapel and began to saw at it, the knife an inch from my throat. As a judge he must have used the Solomonic solution, because he was really good with that thing. The slit was perfect, and Judith slipped the flower into it.


I don’t remember much from that point. I assumed my job was to make the Fort McCracken boys jealous, since Judith had gotten such a much better date from out of town, so I acted mysterious, which meant I spent the evening doing what Helen calls my “tall silent thing” while Mike and Ann danced. The only thing I remember for sure was that I mispronounced the word “intricate,” while explaining my reasons for eschewing all dances but the “bunny hop.”


It’s important when looking back on such experiences to find the good in an otherwise disastrous event. I have done so. I’m sure Judith won the contest among the sisters for who had the best reason to become a nun.


JRMcF


Every bit of the above is true, except for the name of Fort McCracken. I named it in honor of the IU basketball coach in my days there, Branch McCracken, who coached the first two of IU’s 5 NCAA championship teams. Also I’m just making a reasonable guess about Judith’s career choice.


The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!


You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.



{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}




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