Never Take a Wolverine to the Senior Prom

So my week of excess is over and done with. It shall remain in infamy. While the new ideas start rolling in, I'd like to share with you a story written by my father's nom de plume, Ted Martin. I hope you enjoy it!

Never Take a Wolverine to the Senior Prom

The other night I watched a TV show about wolverines. The narrator said they’re the most grumpy, vicious, anti-social animals on planet earth. Scientists aren’t even sure how the species perpetuates itself; male and female wolverines can’t be within a mile of one-another without getting into some big fur-flying, spit-swinging battle royale.

That reminds me of my senior prom.

I’d dated the same girl (we’ll call her “Linda Lou”) all through high school. The two of us were both tall, shy and awkward. We both had pimples and hated dancing. In my mind, we were a perfect couple. I’d assumed we would go to the Prom, hang-out around the punch bowl and make snide remarks about the other kids all night long – a regular evening, in other words, only more dressed-up. But then good old Linda met this hotshot college guy (Lance) and a week before the Prom she announced to everybody that she’d be going with him.

Well, when my cousin Tom heard the news, he panicked. We’d been planning to double, you see, and I was going to drive because Tom had lost his “driving privileges” when his mid-term grades didn’t quite meet expectations – four Ds and an Incomplete. At first, he figured, maybe they’d bail-out on the whole dance thing, too, or maybe ride their bikes (which would have been really creepy).

But then, good-old Lean, Mean Charlene (the String Bean), Tom's date, came up with a plan…

“Char knows this girl,” Tom said brightly the next day at lunch. “She’s from out of town and she’s supposed to be cute. She might be willing to go to the Prom with you.”

I knew the town he was talking about. It was in Missouri, just over the state line. It was the ugliest, dirtiest, most scraggly-assed little hamlet in the Third Federal Reserve District and there was absolutely no reason to go there except to buy fireworks and beer, so naturally we went there often. The only girls I’d ever seen there looked like trolls. But I was game, up to a point…

“Are you saying she’s cute,” I asked warily, “or is Charlene?” I knew from bitter experience that there could be a world of difference.

“I’ve never actually seen her,” he replied, somewhat evasively and a little uneasily I thought, “but Char swears she’s okay. And anyway, her name is Debbie Reynolds. How bad can she be?”

A pert, virginal young actress named Debbie Reynolds was then starring in wildly popular Hollywood movies like “Tammy Tell Me True” and “Tammy and the Doctor.” I’d watched them at the drive-in with good old “Linda” and there was no denying that the Hollywood Debbie was pretty cute. Exactly why that led me to conclude that Debbie from Crudbucket, Missouri would be equally fetching evades me today, but at the time it must have made perfect sense, so I said threw back a shot of milk and said, “Sure, why not.”

The next few days were busy ones. I waxed my mother’s car, got a haircut, picked up my rented tux and bought a big, flashy orchid corsage for Debbie. I wouldn’t actually be meeting her until the big night.

At about eight o’clock the evening of Prom night, with cousin Tom and Mean Charlene nestled in the back seat of my mom’s Merc, I hiked up to Debbie’s door, kicking aside the beer cans and dodging a dog. I was nervous, of course, and it didn’t help that my rented tux’s trousers were about three inches too short. My rented patent leather shoes were spectacular, though. I studied my reflection in the glass of the storm door (“Looks pretty good…”), gave my hair a quick raking through, and rang the doorbell. As I waited, a vision of Hollywood Debbie, all curvy and cute and cuddly, took form in my mind...

You can imagine my shock then at what instead appeared. Debbie my date looked nothing like Hollywood Debbie and certainly not like anything Tom and that lying Charlene had described. For openers, she was short! About four-eleven.  And I was 6’4.” Dancing cheek to cheek would be out of the question.  And where was that “long blond hair” I’d been promised? This Debbie had tightly-wound black curls that made her scalp look like a furry little helmet!

Okay, so she wasn’t cute. Was that the worst crime in history? Maybe she’d make up for it with a great little personality.  But, no…

Even shielded by the glass in the storm door I could sense some sort of sinister aura surrounding Podunk Debbie. She just radiated hostility. I’d never felt such cyclonic, insane wrath, not even from old Mister Neufeld, my algebra teacher. 

Numbly and with a strange static-like buzzing in my ears, I opened the door and handed Debbie her orchid corsage. It was pink, her dress was purple – not a good match. But of course, neither were we. She glared at it with dark, narrow-set, ferret eyes. I’m not sure she actually pinned it on, though; I think maybe she ate it.

Like a condemned prisoner mounting the gallows, I knew that from this moment forward things would only get worse. Suddenly awash with sweat I began to feel myself slipping into shock. We got to the Prom, but I don’t remember how. And when we walked in, we were greeted with almost total silence. I say “almost total” because from somewhere off in the distance I could hear Linda Lou and Lance (that lizard) laughing, at us. And what a sight we must have been – tall, terrified me stumbling along like a zombie in the wake of my baleful little date. I swear there was steam hissing out her ears. Maybe that’s why her hair was so curly.

Debbie, it developed, saw dancing as combat. Fast song or slow, she threw me around like a rag. Darryll “Duke” Irons, an all-state tackle I’d twice had the misfortune of facing in football, had nothing on her. By the end of the third song I had a split lip and a dislocated shoulder. By ten o’clock I’d lost all feeling from the waist down, a blessing because she’d stomped on my foot and crushed my big toe. An hour later, I crawled into the boys’ locker room, praying she’d let me die. Soon, though, in came Tom: “You better get up,” he warned. “They’re gonna play the Bunny Hop and she says you better cut the crap.”

I’ve lost all memory of the following few hours, much like you do after a car crash involving serious head injuries. In retrospect, however, I do give Debbie credit for one thing. Around midnight, she splashed cold water on my face, carried me out of the gym and threw me in the back seat of my mother’s car. She then drove us to the locally famous Tally Ho restaurant where the three of them had a very nice dinner (I’m told). I still couldn’t walk, so I waited in the car, but after an hour or so she brought me a little hunk of bloody-red steak in a doggy bag.

I’d been wrong about Debbie…  A real wolverine wouldn’t have shared her meat.