To me, she was a movie star and a wet dream all rolled into one.  She had this million dollar smile that seemed to light up the classroom day after day.  I would have done anything to have her turn that smile my way.   Unfortunately, she never gave me a second thought.  

I was 10 years old and barely understood the things I felt.  It would be years before Penny and Gerry would invite me to play their version of doctor and still a few more years before my older cousin would open my eyes to things that girls could do that would forever alter my view of the world.  At this point I only knew that Florence was something special.  

(Florence, if by some miracle you recognize yourself in this picture, you should know that you plagued my elementary school existence.  If I had the opportunity to ride beside you on the school bus … I was having a good day.  If you spoke to me more than once or twice in all the years that we were in elementary school together… I would be surprised.  For some reason that completely escaped me at the time, I was simply a non-entity to you and it never made any sense. I only began to open my eyes at the party.)   

There was only one party within our group. Most of us had been together in the same classes from the first grade through the sixth and only once was I ever invited to a birthday party that included most of the class.  If there had been others, I didn’t know about it.  This was a simple Saturday afternoon house party given by the parents of one of the other students.   I don’t remember any of the details, but it was the first time I realized the extent of my alienation. 

Florence and Hannah (and maybe Barbara) were the stars of the class.  In this totally unfamiliar social setting, I watched them cluster and whisper with each other in ways that were different from their behavior at school. For the first time, I watched them flirt.   My own casual conversation with any of them had always been limited , but 'congenial.'  (Back then I would not have been able to arrive at that word, but that’s what it was... congenial.)  Now at this party, however, we could not seem to find congenial.  Now I was carefully being dismissed in favor of other boys in the class. 

As I watched, I gradually became aware of new attributes among my classmates that changed my status considerably.   Prior to that, my status had been quite clear.  I could run faster than everyone in the class… except Jerome, and I was almost always the last remaining player during dodge ball.  I was one of the smarter kids in the class too, although I had struggled with math ever since I’d skipped the second grade. This meant that they were all a year older than I was, but I still had some status among the other boys in the class. 

But now, with my Florence and Hannah suddenly endowed with new social leadership roles, there was giggling and blushing and flirting... and new recognition of certain boys who seemed to miraculously emerge from relative obscurity.   Boys like Richard.

There’s no other way to say it.  Richard was dumb. He rarely did his homework and his math was far worse than mine.  We would not have been surprised if he’d gotten left back.  It was clear to me that Mrs. Gee liked me a lot more than she liked Richard or Stephen for that matter.  Whenever we “chose up” sides for a school yard activity, I was always chosen long before Richard.  But here…suddenly, Richard was the life of the party, and the girls thought he was something special.  They were flirting with Richard.   I heard them comment about his blonde hair and his smile, and I couldn’t help but notice how easy he was with them.  He knew how to flirt back.  He and Stephen, and a few others, had suddenly become older and more mature, and I don’t know when that happened.

In contrast the girls completely ignored me.  That party turned me into a fish out of water and opened my eyes like never before.  Had I always been so left out of the in-crowd and just didn’t know it?  (I hadn’t known there was an in-crowd.)  Could I have done something different to change their view of me?  How was I so different?   

Would my emerging world view be completely different today… if only Florence had consented to a single dance?