“All right.”
He smiled sheepishly and walked down the hallway.
I had been asked out on my first date. I was going out with Bob. Bob and I. We were going to the dance. It was sort of an anticlimactic feeling. Not that Bob wasn’t a nice guy. He was. He just wasn’t Chad.
At lunchtime, while Elise and I walked to the cafeteria, I told her about it. “Bob from chess club asked me to the homecoming dance.”
“What did you say?”
“I said yes. What else could I say?”
“You could have said no.”
“He’s a nice guy.”
She let out a snort. “He’s a geek. He wears those black glasses like people in the fifties wore. Hasn’t anyone ever told him about contacts?”
I looked through my lunch sack to see what my mom had packed for me. No chocolate. I could have used some today. “At least he’s smart. He’ll probably be a great conversationalist.”
“Well, you better hope he can dance. It isn’t called the homecoming discussion group.” She shook her head. “It almost makes me glad no one has asked me. Almost.” She looked around at the crowd of students with evident dissatisfaction. “You know, the guys here all suffer from an incredible lack of good taste. I have yet to have anyone even ask for my phone number.” She let out a sigh. “I knew I shouldn’t have joined the chess club. What if only the Bobs of the world ask me out?”
I tilted my chin down. “Go ahead and say it: ‘What if I end up like you, Cassidy?’”
“Naw,” Elise said, teasing. “It could never get that bad.”
I smacked her arm. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“Yeah, I do. That’s why I just smacked you.”
“I only meant,” she said, ignoring my comment. “That I like guys with a little more danger to them.”
“Bob is plenty dangerous. How many of your dates have ended with the guy offering to take you to the emergency room?”
“Okay,” she conceded, “Maybe dangerous guys are overrated.” Then she laughed.
I rolled my eyes at her, but ended up laughing too. Laughter was as good as chocolate at making things seem all right.
* * *
Mom and Dad were thrilled that Bob had asked me to the dance. Evidently he was the type of young man they wholeheartedly approved of. For the next week they gave me all sorts of helpful dating tips.
“Ask him lots of questions about himself. Men love to talk about themselves.”
“Make sure he opens the door for you. You need to let him know you expect him to be a gentleman.”
“Don’t choose an expensive item from the menu—and whatever you choose, eat it all and let him know you enjoyed it.”
“And remember, be yourself. Act natural.”
By the time Friday came around, I was glad I wasn’t going out with someone I wanted to impress. I’d have been a nervous wreck trying to remember all of their instructions.
Mom and I had gone to Nordstrom’s the day before to find the right dress for the dance. “I won’t spring for something new every time you have a date,” Mom had told me, “but the first time is special. You’ll want it to be memorable.”
As I put hot rollers in my hair that night, both my parents hung around my room and sighed a lot.
“She’s growing up,” Dad said.
“Her first date,” Mom agreed. She put her hand over her heart. “Our little peach is going out with a boy.”
Before I realized what he was doing, Dad got out the camera and took a picture of me. “Cassidy prepares for her first date.”
I made shooing motions with my hands. “I have hot rollers in my hair!”
“You look beautiful, even in rollers.” Mom shook her head sadly. “It’s only three short years until you leave for college.”
I put on my eye shadow, watching Dad’s camera to make sure he didn’t try to get any more candid photos. “You’re not going to do anything to embarrass me when Bob gets here, are you? You’re not going to snap pictures of us together or sit him down in the living room and ask him how he plans on supporting a family?”
Dad fiddled with his camera settings. “Not unless you’re running so late we run out of conversation topics.”
I hurried with the rest of my makeup.
Bob rang the bell at six fifteen. Not only was I ready, I was wondering if I had been stood up on my first date.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said when I let him in. “I had to wait for my pants to get out of the dryer.” He smoothed a wrinkle from his pants. “They’re still a little wet; but I figured if I didn’t come soon, you might leave without me.” He laughed at this and I politely joined in.
I noticed a large gash underneath his chin. He saw me looking at it. “I cut myself shaving,” he explained.
“Ouch.” I went to the coat closet.
Bob took a few steps into the room. “You can say that again. Be glad you don’t have to shave your face, because it’s a real pain. Of course, you have to shave your underarms, and I guess that’s just as bad.”
“Uh, yeah.” I put on my coat.
“Although, really you don’t have to shave your underarms. It isn’t something noticeable like a face. For example, in that dress I can’t tell whether you shaved your underarms or not.” I must have looked mortified because he quickly added, “Not that I’m asking if you did because that’s none of my business, and I’d never ask you something so personal.”
My parents came into the room at this point. Dad had the camera in hand and flashed a picture of us before I could stop him. Then Dad shook Bob’s hand. “Nice to meet you. How are things going at school?”
“Pretty good.”
“Well, I hope you kids have a good time at the dance.”
“I’m sure we will,” I said.
Mom gazed at me and sighed. “Doesn’t Cassidy look nice tonight?”
“She certainly does,” Bob answered. “And I’m sure she has wonderful shaving hygiene too.”
My parents stared at him with frozen smiles.
“Come on, Bob,” I said. “We’d better go or we’ll be late to the dance.”
As we walked towards his car, Bob said, “I only said that about the hygiene because I thought your parents might have overheard me talk about your underarms before. Judging from their expressions, though, I’d say they had no idea what I was talking about.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Do you think they think I’m weird now?”
“Oh, no.”
He followed me around to my side of the car, something I found disconcerting until I realized he was opening the car door for me. I had been out on this date for only five minutes and already I’d forgotten one of my parents’ dating idioms.
When Bob slid into the driver’s seat, I decided to ask him about himself. Men love to talk about themselves. I remembered hearing once during chess club that he’d done so well on the PSAT he already had colleges trying to recruit him.
“So, have you decided where to go to college?”
He pulled out of my driveway, checking for traffic. “Not yet. WSU will give me a full ride, but I still have to check out their entomology department.”
“What’s entomology?”
“The study of bugs.”
I laughed, then realized he was serious. “They have a whole department to study bugs?”
“Of course. There’s so much to study. For example, did you know that ants live in a highly complex society and communicate with one another through chemical secretions?” He kept taking his eyes off the road to look at me. “About ten-thousand different species exist, but you can group them into six categories: army ants, harvester ants, fungus growers, dairy ants—the dairy ants keep aphids like we keep cows, and milk them.”
“You can milk an aphid?”
“Sure, and they’re not even the most interesting variety of ant. The slave makers raid other ants’ nests, kidnap the pupae, and make them work as slaves in their colonies.”