In the spring of 1971, during my last year in high school, I was confronted with a metaphysical dilemma that summarizes the paradox facing all human beings . . .
Allegedly I was a Vanderbilt bound smart aleck but, secretly, I desperately wanted to go to the University of Arkansas, like my girl friend, Martha Lynn, and marry when I was 17 ½ . This was the apex of the southern Arkansas pantheon—being a Razorback and attending school with one’s sweet heart. Prom night reminded me, again, that while Rick Sammons could be a Boll Weevil and my brother—another borderline nerd—could be a Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech, I was burdened with being a “Vanderbilt Commodore.”
Geez!
The fact is, I perennially suffered from high school prom phobia. Besides the fact that I abhorred dancing, I also dreaded the obligatory rituals that surrounded Prom night. On prom night, it was expected that one was to stay out all night and do wicked things with one’s girl friend/ boy friend or something like that. My friend Ray and I had successfully avoided the life scaring scorn surrounding prom avoidance by escaping to his hunting camp, a modest metal building across the levee. But my buddy was smitten this year and had his own girl friend. Likewise, this year, as I mentioned, I had a girl friend too.
It is no easy thing to be a nerd heading to Vanderbilt University, and possibly Harvard Graduate School. This cooled any ardor I could muster and my social status stock was at an all time low. I mean, my reputation was at rock bottom. In the unforgiving southern Arkansas social realm, I was somewhere north of a leper and south of a northerner. My fate promised another year of social isolation.
Thus, my girl friend and my already tarnished reputation demanded that this year I was to stay out all night. I just had to.
It was no easy task. I have always enjoyed going to sleep around 9 PM CST so the notion of staying up all night seemed impossible.
There was some precedence. For fiscal reasons mostly, and because, honestly, there was a definite enervated nightlife in southern Arkansas, we would spend hours “parking” with our girl friends. It worked like this: the couple would find some obscure corn field, or my personal favorite, a road next to the Mississippi River, and would sit and talk and allegedly would do other things—although I never did. No, really, ask Martha Lynn—or, perhaps, given my handicap—Vanderbilt and Harvard notwithstanding—you really do believe me!