high school girls' choice dances

in high school i had a close group of friends, with whom i still associate. we did all kinds of fun things together, and fancied ourselves rather interesting. however, it was very rare that we ever participated in many of the school dances. some of us had boyfriends on and off, and some didn't. in any case, we weren't exactly socially prestigious.

i only attended two school dances: one my friends and i attended as the spice girls when the theme was a pajama party, and the other time was a girls' choice dance.

i thought i would be bold and ask someone. everyone thought i was crazy for asking who i did because i "hardly knew him." but the fact was that i hardly knew anyone of the opposite sex. so i figured it might as well be someone good. i asked a boy that we'll call wonderbread, because he always wore a wonderbread t-shirt. he ate lunch with some of the people that we ate lunch nearby. he was blond, good-looking, kind of a skater kid. relatively quiet, but incredibly intelligent. apparently our english teacher would get frustrated reading his papers because she had to use a dictionary.

since we live in utah and i was participating in a mormony group date, i had to ask him in a ridiculous way. i don't remember what it was, because i think the other girls on the date planned it. at any rate, this meant that he would also have to answer in a creative way. i received my answer one night when the doorbell rang. i went out on the porch to find one end of a string and a note that said "follow me." i was wearing nothing but an oversized beatles t-shirt, but i went out anyway. i started to follow what seemed to be an entire ball of string strung out in wads all over the neighborhood. as i became entirely focused on this string, i heard a truck peel out from nearby and some guys screaming or laughing, i couldn't tell which. in either case it made me feel like the brunt of some joke.

i got to the end of the string. it was lying in the middle of the road. it had snapped. quite possibly from the obnoxious getaway vehicle, in fact.

this forced me to do the unthinkable: actually talk to the person i would or would not be going to the dance with. i called wonderbread. i explained the situation. i asked him where the string had ended, and he said that it had ended in a pumpkin that had the answer inside. i then, awkwardly, asked what the answer had said. i did this fully realizing that this could be, and quite possibly was, a lie. he said that the answer was, "yes."

we went to the dance. it was for halloween, so we went to DI to dress our dates in the weirdest clothing we could find. i think wonderbread spoke to me a total of three times during the night. we danced one dance together and the rest of the time he spent avoiding me.

and i began to wonder if that pumpkin had really contained a different answer than he said it had. something more like what he answered the next girl that asked him to a dance. he left her a rose and a note that said:

unscramble the answer: ON