Remembrance of Things Past

I’ve had my dear friend Kim visiting for the past four days from New Jersey. Kim and I have been friends since West End School in North Plainfield, when she was a private in the third grade army that I commanded as General Mills. Of course we spent a great deal of time over the weekend recalling junior high hijinks and heartbreaks, and I unearthed the memoir I wrote in eighth grade, T Is for Tarzan, which documents all of them.

In one chapter I’m trying to find a boy to go with me to the girls-ask-boys sock hop.

First try: I sent a note to blue-eyed heart throb Bob Senz. He laughed when he read it but made no further reply.

“Leslie!” I screamed, bursting into the room. “My life is ruined!” Everybody in the room looked up in surprise and interest. I gasped out the whole story in a lower voice.
“Oh, Claudia,” Leslie said sympathetically. “Anything but a note. Never write notes.”


Second try: I asked Bob Ohgren, this time in person. I told him, “I have something to ask you, and you know what it is, so just say yes or no.”

He told me he’d let me know eighth period.

“Oh, Bob, you know now, don’t you? What’s there to think over?”
“I’ll let you know eighth period,” he repeated.
Eighth period came and went with no significance. But Wednesday morning in French I was anxious to be finished with my second attempt, for better or worse. I had some more prospects lined up, and if Ohgren refused me I needed time to work on them
“Well?” was all I said as I came up him as we were walking to science and band respectively.
He hesitated, and I continued. “There are three choices: A) You’d die before you’d go with me. B) You’re not going at all for some reason or other. C) You’ll go with me.”
“I don’t think I’m going.”

I can’t believe I wrote all of this down and saved it for forty years! Stay tuned to see the results of attempt number three, when I pursue the “very interesting rumor that no one had asked Jim Burnett.”