The Senior Prom and The Way We Were.......

Diane is beautiful and self-assured.  I am shy and self-conscious, with an injured eye.

I was a 17 year old high school senior, and it was time for the senior prom.  Now, this was a problem for me for several reasons.

First of all, I was deathly afraid of girls.  I very much wanted to talk to girls, date girls, be desirable to girls, etc; but, my self-esteem and confidence were nonexistent. 

Second, just a week before the prom, I had a very bad injury that I suffered on the baseball field.  I had been playing center field when the batter hit a ball into right-center field.  The right fielder and I collided head-on while trying to catch the ball. I ended up in the hospital.  My right eye was damaged (took about 6 months go get back to normal) and I looked pretty stupid, my eye clouded with blood and the right side of my face flattened out.  If I was self-conscious before the injury, I was a basket case afterward.

But, I HAD to have a date for the prom.  I'm a pretty sad looking specimen in the photograph above.  But Diane, my date, is the epitome of self-assurance.  Beauty and the beast.  Ha.

Gosh, wasn't I a skinny kid?  And, look at that haircut!  But, this is how we were in May of 1962.

NOTES: 

---I went on to develop self-esteem, have a family, put some weight on my frame and "find myself".

---Diane married one of her high school teachers, 15 years her senior, just a few weeks after graduation.  Predictably, they divorced.  I lost track of her years ago.