Formalisms

Complaining about my birthday would be like complaining about getting free ice-cream. But since I'm picky, I'm going to complain about it anyway. The chief problem was that I did not get to see two of my friends who live here in town at breakfast. Now generally this would not be a big deal, but one of those friends in particular was supposed to go, not because it was my birthday but coincidentally because I was going to ask her to a dance. The dance is a formal attire shin-dig and is invitation only. I happened to be given an invitation by one of the people who is hosting the event. Last year I was also invited to this dance, and even had a date, some one I had been wanting to take to this dance for the past 5 years but never got a chance to (the dance is a rather old annual winter tradition). But just a few days before the event my date decided she did not want to go with me and I ended up not going at all. So this year, I had higher hopes because the girl I was going to ask out at that breakfast always wanted to go but never had anyone ask her before.

Because it is a formal event, I was going to ask her in person sometime during the breakfast. This was right before everyone was leaving for Turkey break so I wanted to be sure and do it before we all left. But she didn't go to breakfast. I thought about waiting until this week (the dance is this Friday), but then thought that I should ask her while she was at home so that while she was home she could pick up a dress if she didn't already have one here. That was a small trivial part to why last year's date decided not to go. Her claim was she didn't have a good dress. And while this was more a convenient excuse for her to get around saying any real reason, I did not want to mess up this year's dance as well. So on Saturday I gave newbie a buzz to ask her. I felt calling someone up is still preferable to e-mail or even worse yet texting.

As I've mentioned in the past, I'm not very good at remaining calm when I approach girls. When I called I do not think it could have been at a worse time. It seemed that precisely at that moment, right then, her sister had won All American. Now I have no clue what this is, some sports thing I guess, but everyone was making a huge fuss about it in the background. So I pretended to be happy for her sister, although my nerves were already running high and all I wanted to do was get to the point of why I was calling and then get off the phone. After all the fuss, she finally realized I must have had some reason for calling and asked what I wanted. Then I got to ask her if she'd like to go the dance with me. And miracle of miracles she got excited and shouted out "Wow! I've never been asked to go to this dance before! And now in less than a day I've gotten two invitations." "What?" "Yeah, I got e-mailed yesterday from a guy asking if he could take me."

At this point I tried to explain to her that whoever it was that e-mailed her was a coward who needed to grow a pair. But as I said, her sister had just won All American and she needed to get off the phone.

I'm not going to the dance. Instead I'm going up to Chicago. There's going to be an alumni dinner there on the top floor of one of the tall buildings (obviously I'm not from Chicago). The dinner is for those of us who were affiliated with the Newman Center on campus when we were undergrads, so I should get to see a lot of old faces. And I get to ride up and back with two of the priests so that should be fun. Okay, this paragraph doesn't really belong with this post but if after I go up I want to talk about it, I wanted to give myself a good segway.

A few days later, after I made that phone call, I got another call from a friend of mine who did get a date for this dance. So I congratulated him for manning up to ask a girl out. He said he text messaged her. I was at work when I got this call, but that did not stop me from screaming at him for being a gut-less wonder. You do not, e-mail, text, or facebook a girl to a formal dance. It is just not done. You grow a pair and ask her out in person. Speaking of which, the girls are also partially to blame for putting up with these pathetic proposals. Then after I calmed down a bit, I asked him who the lucky girl is that he's taking. Her name is Maggie.