The Corsage
Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 01:08 PM

 

The Corsage
 
In the fall of 1963, I met a girl almost by accident. In many ways, we were incompatible, it certainly began that way. Her Father was a Methodist minister. She was beautiful, smart and religious, but perhaps opposites attract. In the short course of a week, after acting initially as though she wanted nothing to do with me, four days after I met her she asked me to walk her to her dorm after dinner and took my arm. Go figure.
 
On a Monday evening, I went down to the lobby to check my mail, a sort of study break. It was 9:00pm and there was a girl sitting at the switchboard. This was unusual because only the Dorm Mom and the Resident Assistants worked the switchboard, which closed at 10:00pm. She was very attractive, a stunner actually. She was studying, but selling doughnuts for the service organization she was in and doing a brisk business. I bought one, wolfed it, and tried to talk to her. My reception was glacial. This was surprising, because usually folks have to know me awhile before they dislike me. I asked a guy from the dorm who she was.
 
“That’s Carolyn, The Ice Queen,” was his reply, scarcely raising his eyes from the magazine he was reading. “Don’t even think about her, she’s got no time for anyone, especially you.”
 
Realizing the perceptiveness of his observation, I shrugged and went back upstairs to return to my books. How had I ever managed to tear myself away from “Igneous and metamorphic rocks” in the first place?
 
Somewhat later, I went back down sometime after 11 to take another break and read the paper. The lobby was quiet and somewhat dark, there was no one there. As I searched the sports page for some meaningful heavy reading I almost missed the girl asleep at the switchboard. I walked over to the reception desk and with some apprehension I gently woke her up, although after my previous icy reception, I was tempted to yell HEY YOU! Really tempted. . . . . . . Really.
 
The girl was at first disoriented, then very upset. A straight A scholar [I learned later] at a time when that meant a lot more than it does now, she had wasted precious minutes of study time by falling asleep. In addition, she would in all probability be assessed “late minutes” for arriving at her dorm after 11:00pm. The University of Redlands quad which at that time separated the men’s and women’s dormitories [they are all co-ed now] was dark after 11pm except for the lights on the chapel and of course it was quite late for a female to be walking around alone. I offered to walk her back to her dormitory, a generous gesture that seemed to be completely unappreciated.
 
The frosty beauty actually glanced outside before she said in a tone that lowered the room temperature by 10 degrees, “That won’t be necessary.” Yes, this is the ice queen all right.
Undeterred, and because as Khris Khristopherson once wrote, “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” I said,
 
“I can understand you not wanting to be seen with the likes of me, but I would really worry about you walking home in the dark, so why don’t you go and I’ll follow at a distance that won’t give people the idea we’re together.”
 
The Ice Queen just looked at me, her beautiful face a mask of indifference and then struggled to pick up her considerable amount of stuff which 30 seconds before I would have gladly carried for her, and headed for the door, which I was at least quick enough to open for her. I followed her, respectfully behind. It was very dark. Suddenly annoyed, she finally slowed about halfway across the quad, and said crossly,
 
“You might as well walk with me.”
 
“That’s OK,” I replied as evenly as I could.
 
Still she stopped as if to wait for me, so I stopped and waited, maintaining the ten yards between us. At last she sighed, shrugged her shoulders and continued walking. I watched her safely to the front door, and as I jogged away, she turned, and I could barely hear her say, “Thank You” because I was already nearly halfway to my dorm.
 
I had never seen the girl before, even at our small school, but during the rest of that week it seemed I saw her everywhere. I deliberately ignored her. I thought she expected me to ask her out, and was probably contemplating what would be the cruelest way to turn me down. I had decided I wanted no part of The Ice Queen, who had spoken to me with all the warmth of someone dismissing a telemarketer.
 
Nevertheless.
 
After a late track workout I was having dinner alone in a corner of the dining hall at the end of the week when the Ice Queen and another girl sat down across from me. We said hi and I immediately got up to leave, a move just short of rude but sending a message and affording me a small victory. To my astonishment, she asked me to sit down and actually started talking to me. Her friend left, and before I knew it, she was sitting next to me, which for some reason made me angry at myself. When I got up to leave once more, she asked,
 
“Would you like to try walking me to my dorm again?”
 
 I still wanted to play hard to get but I wasn’t crazy. We got up to leave, and she actually took my arm as we left the Commons, a move that seemed to say, “This is my guy.” For a second, I wanted to shrug it off, but as I said, I wasn’t crazy, and I guess I mentioned that she was visually dazzling and smelled of peaches? As we left I thought that perhaps this hard to get stuff really works?
 
Still, I was stunned two weeks later when she asked me to the Winter Formal Dance. Preparations were required. One of the ways I had discovered to make money was to work with a local florist. This required me to go door to door in my dormitory to ask guys who were going to the dance if they needed a corsage. The guys paid in advance, and I made a list and arranged with the florist to provide the flowers. For this small effort, I was rewarded with a free corsage and a small stipend. On the afternoon of the dance I stopped by the florist, picked up the flowers, double checked the orders and put them in the dorm’s communal refrigerator without another thought.
 
I had arranged to double date with another couple because at the time I was driving a VW Bug the seating in which was cramped and problematic. I picked up my own flower from the dorm kitchen and hurried to my friend’s car without checking on the flower inside the little box, a major error in judgment. We went over to the girls’ dormitory, buzzed the girls and waited for them in the lobby. John’s date arrived first, and then as I stood there with my corsage box in my hand, Carolyn came down the staircase accompanied by moonbeams and starlight, at that moment the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. The ice had melted, but she still stood like a queen, and fortunately there were no smoke alarms to trigger.
 
At the time there was a tradition that the guy pinned the flower on the girl, but one look at Carolyn’s dress told me I had made a significant mistake regarding the selection of my flower offering. A white orchid goes with anything; however Carolyn’s dress was constructed in such a way as to preclude a nervous nineteen year old from doing any pinning. I could see immediately that I should have requested a wrist accessory. In any case I knew I wouldn’t be attaching any flower that night, and so I simply shook myself to exit from the gawking mode, and humbly offered the box.
 
“Are you going to help me pin it on?” she asked with a smile that doubled the wattage in the room.
 
“Ah. . . . . No.” I replied nervously.
 
“OK,” she said, and opened the box. She briefly looked at the contents and quickly replaced the lid. Although she handed it back to me without comment, the look on her face said HORRIFIED.
 
I took the box from her, and looked inside. I closed the lid immediately, then quickly opened it again. No mistake, it contained a jockstrap with my name on it. I closed the lid and then looked yet again. Yep, no illusion. I processed: ministerskidreligiousshelteredlikeheralotIwanther tolikeme. I was completely flustered, although my mood went from surprise to humiliation to anger in about a nanosecond. Carolyn looked at me anxiously for an explanation. It occurred to me for the first time she might actually think I was responsible.
 
“Someone’s idea of a joke, I’ll be back,” I said hastily, and bolted out the front door.
On the run I went straight to my dorm, covering the ground quickly despite the almost new dress shoes I was wearing. My roommate was waiting for me in the dorm lobby with his entourage. The mood of the group was already mildly mirthful, yet anticipatory. Bill and I discussed the situation and after awhile I let him up. Someone gave me the real corsage. I checked the box three times.
 
The consensus of the room was that the Ice Queen had it coming for rejecting more proper suitors including those present, and then actually having the temerity to ask an obviously inferior and decidedly undeserving person rather than waiting to be properly asked herself. Without weighing in on that discussion, I sprinted back to Carolyn’s dorm. I arrived sweating profusely, with clothes and hair in disarray from the wrestling. She was waiting in the lobby, and once again I handed her the box.
 
She took it but looked at me quizzically.
 
“It’s OK, I checked.”
 
She took the flower out of the box, and what do you know, it had a wristlet attachment.
 
“It’s perfect,” she said softly, her eyes devoid of anything that could be confused with doubt, and stepped into my space to give me a soft kiss.