BY ROCHELLE CRAIG

First posted on Quick Brown Fox in 2023. Copyright is held by the author.

IN WESTERN’S 1954-55 basketball season, my two roommates and I pulled off a sort of hat trick. All three of us, Mary, Sue and I, made the Junior Women’s Basketball team in our very first year. Technically, Mary and I were a brace, having played together throughout our five years at our small high school.

One wintry day, our team bus was heading east to play against Waterloo Lutheran College, a small institution in Kitchener/Waterloo. The city of K/W was a twin city but not twinned neatly like Fort Francis & Port Arthur — now joined and renamed Thunder Bay. K/W was more like two octopuses mating in mutual entanglement, like that old kids’ Chinese Puzzle game, but with no easy demarcation lines, and with arms (or roads) twisting all over.

We’d started our intimidating victory songs and chants far too soon and were worn out before puncturing even a corner of Kitchener. Not having allowed extra time for straining the solid parts of Waterloo, from the gel of Kitchener, it was a challenge trying to find the college, (long before the invention of GPS) .

We’d been expecting a smaller but quainter version of Western’s campus. Maybe because it was not yet a degree-granting institution and had to have its diplomas issued from Western.

Smaller — yes. Quainter — very much so! The whole campus was composed of houses. Not ‘Houses’ as in ‘Faculties’, such as the house/school of Music, but as in: a red-brick bungalow that was the girls’ dormitory with a couple of co-ed classrooms included; a Victorian yellow-brick house which contained a cafeteria and classrooms and with a gymnasium added onto it. The Theology Department and its classrooms were in a nearby Lutheran Church. And some classes were even held in College President Hagey’s and the Dean’s own homes. Their whole enrolment was below 300 students, so every student knew each other well — one of its most charming qualities.

We were winning our game 10-2 in the last quarter without me having played even once — as usual — when our coach unexpectedly yelled, “Shelley,! Get out there now!”

Quickly closing up my Solitaire game cards, I leapt into the game. My presence made no difference to the score.

Flushed with success due to our team’s 12-2 win, I was trooping off the court heading for the shower in the Dean’s no-longer-private bathroom, when I heard my name called. My sneakers squealed to a rubber-pe-e-e-e-ling stop.

Then a mellifluous voice intoned, “Well, after all these years, who’d ever’ve thought I’d run into you here, in this gym joint!”

I was still lightheaded from that first and possibly only win of the season, but my corneas had defogged just enough to make out the dazzling smile of that golden-haired, blue-eyed, Aryan, Teutonic, God of Handsomeness — my high school friend, Betty’s, onetime date — JJ!

JJ and I had attended the same high school, where he was considered quite the catch! He was two or three years older than I, and one school-year ahead of me, but after renewing old acquaintances, we were running out of things to chat about. Still, too soon, I was dismayed to hear Sue urgently calling, “Shelley! Hurry up or you’ll miss the bus.”

Then suddenly JJ blurted out, “Do you have a date for our old high school’s Valentine’s Day Prom?”

We alums were apparently invited for old times’ sake.

Not daring to miss my ride home, I lacked the time to explain why I didn’t have a date already — because I hadn’t yet dated anyone I liked well enough to take home — or who would go home with me without putting up a struggle. Bringing home a stranger was a big move in my small hometown.

So, I just answered, “No. Why?”

JJ admitted, “I haven’t invited anyone yet either.” Then he added bluntly, “So, do you want to go with me or not?”

I was thunderstruck and lightning-struck to boot! Shyly, and leery of this just being an early April Fool’s Day joke, I nevertheless said, “OK.” and dashed off to change.

I was swirly-brained that the popular, groovy JJ had invited me to our Prom. I thought to myself, Boy, just wait till Betty hears about this!

Even though Betty’s lone date had failed to crest the ‘Hill’ of his favourite song, ‘I Found My Thrill on Blueberry Hill’, I hoped that my dream date would at least surmount the foothills of it.

I used the remainder of my summer tobacco wages to buy the stunning, strapless, white evening gown that I’d been drooling over for ages in Sophie’s Dress Shoppe window.

The evening of that romantic Valentine’s Prom, on the arm of my newest-found love, the gorgeous JJ, I made my grand entrance to the ball, rolling in gracefully, like a float in a parade.

My dress must’ve looked like one of those surprise cakes that I’d just burst up out of. Its skirt resembled a multi-layered wedding cake made up of frothy white net tulle. The wavy outside edges of each layer of tulle were trimmed with seemingly, gold-encrusted, penitentiary-strength, barbed wire.

The wobbliness in JJ’s legs diminished as he found that he could fully embrace me without being eviscerated — if he didn’t make any sudden moves.

My gown was so well-structured with whalebone stays, that when my torso turned, the dress didn’t. Since I couldn’t make any sharp turns, no matter what the music’s rhythm was, we were limited to dancing circular, waltz box steps all evening. Even if about to collide with another couple, we had to just keep plowing onward, like the Titanic, unable to change course quickly.

Couples we accosted on the dance floor, suffered snagged suit jackets and shredded nylons at the least, and razor-like slashes at the worst.

By the end of my fairy-tale evening, my chest, underarms and breasts’ outside rims were as blistered and red as a rooster’s wattle, from chafing against those rigid whalebone stays. But stay up, they did.

Co-incidentally, the First Aid Room was gradually becoming swamped with cuts and abrasion casualties.

But JJ and I waltzed lovingly on, in blissful ignorance and oblivion. What a romantic thrill! A Valentine Prom to remember!

***

Rochelle is an unrecognized (and rightly so) artist, failed writer with a gross of unpublished books, much maligned burned-out teacher, rural newspaper contributor, travel lover, pet liker and tough-love (before the term was invented) mother of six (three of each kind), grandmother of sixteen and great grandmother of two in 2024, two more recently and twins due momentarily.

sangkarbet hongkongpools sangkarbet chrishondrosfilm.com sangkarbet cerutu4d cerutu4d monperatoto situs slot situs slot situs slot monperatoto monperatoto