By Eleanor Kazdan, January 16, 2020 — Ninth grade. I was 13 and just recovering from my most awkward life stage. [I was] taller than most kids, [with] pimples, frizzy hair, and big feet. In a word, unconfident. Ninth grade was good. I felt a bit more popular, became an outstanding music student, as well as a member of an underground group that pilfered erotic novels from their older siblings and passed them around. I had not yet had a boyfriend, despite a few crushes. I didn’t think too much about dating. But I did know the junior high prom was coming up.
I played the cello in a string quartet. One day, the serious somewhat nerdy violinist, Martin, who was 14 or 15, shocked me by asking me if I would go to the prom with him. It was a month away. I said yes. Then began a month of silence. Neither of us mentioned this date again. I saw Martin every day. I began to wonder if I had just imagined the whole thing.
My mother sewed me a beautiful sky-blue organza dress, and I bought white flats. I was taller than Martin. About 2 days before the prom, the silence was finally broken. Martin told me that he and his father would pick me up and drive to the prom.
So it happened. It was an awkward and hardly enjoyable evening. I spent a lot of time slouching, painfully aware I was so much taller than my date. We danced. Conversation was sparse. Just like in the old-fashioned dating etiquette books we read in those days, he walked me to my front door and pecked me on the cheek. I had survived my first date.
And I never saw Martin again.