THE LARGEST GULF [W, 9-4-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Memories of an Old Man—THE LARGEST GULF [W, 9-4-24]

 

It’s time for school to start. Well, yes, it’s been in session for a month now, but in my day, school started when God intended, after Labor Day. So this is a good time to remember high school friends…

Carolyn and Anne and I were an unlikely trio. They were the prettiest girls in school, and the smartest, and the wealthiest. The beauty and intelligence were absolute. They would be pretty and smart in any town. Wealth was relative. Anne was the doctor’s daughter. Carolyn’s father was a prominent local businessman. They were wealthy by small town standards. Coupled with the beauty and intelligence, though, they were untouchables. The sort of girls who have to hang around together because other girls don’t want the comparison.

I felt strangely comfortable with them, though, because they were so far out of my league. The idea of me, the welfare boy, dating one of them, was ridiculous. Oh, I was in love with them, of course. I was awed by them. But I worshiped them only from… well, close up, actually.

We were outliers on opposite ends of the social spectrum. That gave us a commonality. They were girls who didn’t have a date for the dance because they had money and clothes and cars. I was the boy who didn’t have a date for the dance because I did not have money or clothes or car. The gulf between us was so great that it didn’t exist.

I never lusted after them, but that was sort of universal with me. I didn’t lust after girls because I was so afraid of them. I didn’t imagine having sex with a girl because to engage with a girl so significantly and intimately would surely reveal my incompetence as a human being. I fantasized not about sex but about romance—things like…when asking a girl for a date, she might lightly touch my arm as she said “yes.” That was as far as my imagination could take me. [Remember, in those days, there was no birth control pill, and people weren’t even allowed to say “damn” on TV.]

Our strange trio started with drivers ed. [1] We did driving practice in groups of three, with Mr. Oren Stuckey, known as “Overdrive Oren,” for reasons that were obvious then, but not now, when people don’t even know about cars having “overdrive.” Anne and Carolyn and I were assigned together to the dual-controls Ford. When one of them drove, in the front seat with Mr. Stuckey, I sat in the backseat with the other one. I was in the back seat of a car with the prettiest girl in school! [Whichever one I was with was the prettiest one.]

That continued. When they were the only girls in physics class, and we had to do lab work in groups of three, Mr. Kenneth Robinson said they could choose whichever boy they wanted for their third. They didn’t even say anything, just looked at each other and then beckoned to me to come join them. It was a given. We belonged together. We were joined by outlier status—the prettiest and smartest and wealthiest girls, the awkward, overachieving, welfare boy.

If they were nice to me because they pitied me, the pity was not because I was poor. Any pity was because I tried so hard to be a guy that girls would like, and I was so bad at it. I was like a puppy that can’t jump high enough to get the treat but is cute to watch make the effort.

They went out of their way to explain to people that, despite my vanilla appearance and awkward manner, I was smart, and also a friend, and that was all they needed to know. [2]

We stayed in touch off and on through the years.

Anne and I both went to IU. Anne had a new car and was in the premier sorority. I lived in the Residence Scholarship dorm, for kids who were smart enough for college but too poor to afford it. At vacation times, Anne would give me a ride home. All the guys would be out in front, waiting for rides, and this tall, beautiful blond would drive up in her new car, hop out in her long camelhair coat, give me a hug, and carry my suitcase. Oh, did that ever change my status in the dorm.

It was harder to stay in touch with Carolyn, for she went to Purdue, but the Purdue-IU gulf was another that is so wide it doesn’t matter. In her most recent letter, Carolyn said that she is proud of me, what I achieved, the good I did.

They are old ladies now. We’ve all had our hard times. Carolyn’s son died in his thirties. Anne is a widow. My family’s had a lot of cancer. But in my memory, we are still the unlikely trio, the pretty girls and the welfare boy, united by drivers ed, and physics labs, and that special friendship that starts when life is all about possibilities, not limits, when the gulf is so large that it doesn’t exist.

John Robert McFarland

1] Why drivers ed if I didn’t have a car? Because the smart tax payers of Oakland City thought it was good public policy for everyone who might get behind the wheel to know how to do it safely. Drivers ed was mandatory.

2] I wasn’t awkward in all social situations, just with girls. Mostly I was quite comfortable with people, because I really liked people. The saying under my yearbook picture: I am wealthy in my friends.