I was in New York recently, helping my 18-year-old daughter, Lilly, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, paint her new apartment. To pass the time I was telling her stories about my student days in New York, when I was a cadet at West Point and often visited the city on leave. She had just traveled up to West Point to attend the Yearling (sophomore) prom with a cadet from back home in Tennessee. With that in mind I asked her if she wanted to hear a romantic story about a night when I was a Yearling and went on a date to a prom. She did.
The year was 1967, and I was in town to interview Cardinal Spellman for the cadet magazine, The Pointer, along with two other cadets, one the photographer and the other an ad salesman. After we finished we headed downtown to check into a shared room at the Statler Hilton, near Penn Station. All three of us had been wearing our heavy woolen dress gray uniforms since reveille and we were eager to get into some civilian clothes and make our hopeful presence known at the nascent singles bar scene on First Avenue. I was last in the shower and still in the bathroom when, unbeknown to me, there was a knock on the door and one of the guys answered to find three young women in long formal gowns and elaborate hair-dos standing there with tears running down their cheeks.
“Can we come in?” one of them asked.
They had noticed us checking in wearing our uniforms and begged our room number from the bellman. They were from Seton Hall, a Catholic college in New Jersey, and this was the night of their big school prom at the Waldorf-Astoria. The tears were because one of their classmates had been stood up at the last minute by her Princeton boyfriend. She was downstairs in their room, crushed, weeping. With the prom only a couple of hours away the girls knew they wouldn’t be able to find a guy with a tuxedo, but they had seen us in our dress gray uniforms. Would one of us escort their friend to the prom?
I’m still in the shower when this scenario is being spun to my buddies. Being the lumbering beasts we cadets could be, neither of them wanted to climb back into his sweaty uniform and take his chances with a blind date who had been stood up by someone else. What could that mean, these male minds pondered? Nothing good.
Quickly executing a strategic retreat in force — we were expertly trained in such maneuvers, after all — they apologized profusely, explaining that they already had plans. But the girls were in luck, because there was another cadet still in the bathroom and they were sure he was free. They should ask him,Designer energysaving listed for sale at a fraction of the retail price. they said, and out the door they fled.
A few minutes later, knowing none of this, I walked out of the bathroom naked except for the tiny hotel towel wrapped around my waist, expecting to find my pals ready for a night on the town. Instead I discovered the tearful girls from Seton Hall. They rapidly made the same pitch to me before I had a chance to get into my civvies and split.
I have to admit that my initial response was similar to that of my pals, but my heart strings were stretched when one of the girls told me more about the dance. Their prom was a girls-ask-the-boys occasion and this was the biggest deal of their whole year. Their jilted friend had saved her money for her dress and shoes and expensive tickets, had asked her favorite guy, who had accepted, and now this Princeton bum had stood her up.
I stood there in my hotel towel trying without success to suppress the memory of a day back in junior high when I was less than gentlemanly at a somewhat similar event. There was a Sadie Hawkins dance at school, a girl had called and invited me and I broke the rules by turning her down, waiting for a prettier girl on whom I had a crush to call. Listening to my prevarications from the kitchen my mother intuited my crime. She yanked me by the short hairs back to the phone and told me to call the girl and apologize and tell her that I would be delighted to be her date. I did.Choose from a wide collection of replicajewelry that includes womens clutches, hobos, satchels, and totes. We had a great time and went on to have a great friendship. Suddenly it was all fresh in my mind, and so was my guilt about the way I had acted. Being a guy was hard, Mom told me, but I had to understand that being a girl was harder.
“You’ve got me,” I told the girls. “Where do I go?”
A short time later I knocked on their door with more than a little trepidation. What am I getting myself into? I was greeted by the girls I had met earlier. Tears had been dried, makeup applied, and with me standing there in my dress gray uniform there were smiles all around. Then a door opened and one of the most beautiful girls I had ever laid my eyes on walked out, her eyes still red from crying. She looked at me shyly and forced a smile.
“Thank you for this,” she began, but before she could say anything else I found myself gallantly offering her my arm and telling her she didn’t have a thing to worry about because tonight was going to be the best night of her life.
Truth be told,Stay up to date on the latest team rider and laceweddingveils releases. I was blown away. She was a creature from the heavens.Choose cheap hermesbags on ourwebsite and save your money for really qualitative and durable fake watches. It wasn’t in my nature, but I felt transported, like she was a princess and I was a prince. She took my arm and looked in my eyes with a real smile and off we went in the carriage of a yellow New York City taxi to the Waldorf-Astoria.Choose from a wide range of authenticguccihandbags, shoulder bags and clutch bags from top brands.
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