It was supposed to be junior prom at Stoughton High, but it got cancelled (thirteen years before the movie Footloose). Patsy wasn’t going steady with anyone, so she wasn’t too upset. At the last minute the school arranged a dance in the high school gym, but with no decorations, no court (no prom queen), and… Continue reading Prom Be Gone
Category: relationships
Worst Professor Ever
She taught the research class at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. I needed the course to earn my master’s degree. It would be easy. I’d written dozens of research papers at ISU. She said we could choose any topic. All we had to do was take a position, defend it with an intro, middle,… Continue reading Worst Professor Ever
Salsa and Salsa
We had been student teaching in Venezuela for three weeks. Linda and some of the other teachers at our school, Campo Alegre, decided to take us to the beach. We grabbed our suits and climbed into Linda’s car and took the highway through the long tunnels down to the Caribbean Sea. Kristy and I had… Continue reading Salsa and Salsa
Football Game Fail
Betty had first seen Dwayne at the hockey game, sitting by himself, drinking a beer. Her friends commented that he looked like Richard Geer. She made an effort to strike up a conversation with him. He turned out to be a teacher and a farmer in a small town outside of Des Moines. He was… Continue reading Football Game Fail
Wrestlers and Basketball Dudes
The summer after high school graduation Debi, Donna, and I climbed into Debi’s blue Ford Pinto and cruised over to the next town of Johnston. Why? New guys, of course, not the same old, same old Urbandale guys. Debi was petite, Donna a little taller, and I was a giraffe. We made an odd trio… Continue reading Wrestlers and Basketball Dudes
Three Strikes, You’re Out
He didn’t seem her type — he was a few pounds overweight but not bad looking. He wore a nice suit in his online photo. He was an architect. He pursued her with photo-likes over a few weeks and text messages, too. Ellen agreed to a phone chat. At least he seems intelligent. He was… Continue reading Three Strikes, You’re Out
One Flood, Two Fishermen
Kristy and I met at ISU. We had been around the world together, at least to Venezuela where we did our student teaching, plus Ecuador, Peru and Colombia. Now we were roommates in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska. As the story goes, I applied for the third grade teaching job, the principal interviewed me, showed… Continue reading One Flood, Two Fishermen
Marathon Man
She’d tried them all — Match, eharmony, Our Time, Chemistry, Zoosk, Okay Cupid, and Coffee Meets Bagel. She’d had her share of weirdos and had learned to use a fake name, fake town, and a fake place of work. She had been stalked in the past. Now she knew how to do it and be… Continue reading Marathon Man
The Petite Percussionist
He played the trombone in community college. She played percussion. He was a sophomore; she was a freshman. He was short, she was shorter. He saw her get out of the car every day, with her boyfriend? No, it was just her brother, Jack. George was a pilot. She liked pilots. “Do you want to… Continue reading The Petite Percussionist
Too Tired to Boogie
The band room was a freezer. “Vamos a sentarnos en el pasillo, clase.” “What?” “We’ll sit in the hallway today.” It was zero degrees outside. The school district wanted a Spanish class but had no classroom for me. I’d complained a zillion times – when the band teacher held private tuba lessons in his office,… Continue reading Too Tired to Boogie
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 