Prom Not

     Some of you will find this hard to believe, but I did not go to my high school junior prom!        Back in those days, you had to have a date to go to prom, and, well, no one asked me... no date.

     There were a lot of girls in my class who did not get asked to prom – the teachers said there must have been something weird in the air because it was a record number of junior girls not being asked that year!

     And somehow, ridiculously, that was a source of consolation to us!

     Now that I think about it, maybe the teachers said that every year to the girls who did not get a date for prom – yeah, a record number of them weren't asked!

     Prom was always in May, and spring break was in April. That year, the school announced that the doors of the school would be open during the days of spring break so the juniors could come and work on the prom decorations if they wanted to.

     My friend, Lynn......who also was not asked to prom, said that on the Thursday of spring break, she was going to go to the school to help with the decorations. And Lynn said that I should go with her.

     I was kind of reluctant to do that.

     You know, all my life up till then I had heard about Junior Prom and what a magical night it would be and how it would be the pinnacle of my high school years. But by spring break of junior year, it was pretty definite that I would not be attending my own junior prom. So why the hell should I help make the decorations for it?

     The whole concept made me feel like Cinderella – helping everyone else get ready for the big dance. Except even she, Cinderella, with some fairy godmother intervention, got to go to the ball! I guess that means I was less than Cinderella – Cinder without the ella!

      But then again, it was a class project, one should be a team player, one should show class spirit, yada yada yada – and I told Lynn I would go with her.

      On the Thursday of spring break, Dad dropped me off at Lynn's house on his way to work in the morning. It was very early, and no one was up at Lynn's yet. I decided to wait a while before knocking, and I walked around to the back yard so as to be less conspicuous to the neighbors. By the back door there was a small patio area with two chairs.

      And there was Lynn's cat!

      Lynn had a gray cat with white markings on its face. I talked to the cat, “Hey Little Guy, what are you doing out here? I thought you were an indoor cat?” The cat rubbed its head on my legs. What a cutie! I bent down and picked the cat up.

      Yes, I did know better. I have no rational explanation for why I chose that moment to do something so incredibly dumb.

       As soon as the cat was in my arms, it let out a nasty meow, scratched my right hand, and jumped away, running off into the field past Lynn's yard.

      As I watched it go, it dawned on me – that was not Lynn's cat!

      I looked at my hand – it was not scratched!

       Instead there was a puncture mark on the far right side of the hand........and a second puncture way way over on the far left side of my hand.

       That dang thing had bit me!

       Lynn's family was soon up, and I went inside where I saw the indoor cat with gray fur and white markings on its face. Lynn and her mom were worried that I might blame them for picking up a strange cat, but I tried to convince them that it was 100% my fault!

      We went to school. In one of the hallways, the two boys who were the artists in our class unrolled a huge mural that they had drawn for the prom. The theme our year was Alice in Wonderland – (the theme that I myself voted for – so there was that, anyway). The mural had Wonderland stuff on it and would be on the wall in the cafeteria the night of the prom. I was afraid to touch their creation, not being in the least artistic myself. The guys said it would be okay to work on the background. I probably muttered some Cinderella references at that point.

      Whenever a different classmate passed by, I would stand up, walk over to the person, and say, “I picked up a strange cat at Lynn's house this morning and it bit me. Want to see?” and with that I stuck my right hand in front of the poor hapless classmate.

      Yeah, and I wonder why I was not asked to prom?

      But the thing is, every time I showed my wound to a new person, my hand actually looked different!

      It was swelling!

      By mid-morning, my right hand was twice the size of my left hand!

      Around 11 o'clock, the skin on my right hand was stretched as far as it could possibly stretch, and yet the swelling was pushing it to go further!

      It hurt a lot. I could no longer hold a pencil or a paintbrush, and at lunchtime, I used my left hand to hold the sandwich I had brought.

      When I got home that day, I sure did not want to tell my parents about the really dumb thing I had done, but my hand was going to be difficult to hide, and besides that, I had promised different people at school that I would get medical attention (if Mom and Dad thought I needed it). So I walked up to the stove where Mom was putting dinner on one of our plates, and I said, “At Lynn's house this morning there was a cat that I thought was Lynn's cat and I picked it up, only it wasn't Lynn's cat, and it got mad and bit me.” 

      And with that I swung my huge deformed hand into Mom's view.

      She almost dropped the dinnerplate.

      But Mom managed to set the plate down on the counter before getting into full tilt Mom-mode with a performance I have remembered to this day. “Now I am going to have to drop everything and start calling doctors. Because if I don't do anything, you could die in your sleep from lack of medical attention. I have to do that. How am I going to find a doctor tonight? The family doctor we had doesn't practice anymore!”

      Yeah, Mom was royally ticked.

      We didn't have a family doctor because we did not go to the doctor unless it was an emergency. The last emergency was when Eric plucked the icicle from the eave of the house and the icicle slipped through his fingers and split his lip open. And that had been six years earlier! Got a new doctor real quick that day. (Mom also passed out all the way that day when she saw Eric's gash!). And so that doctor-after-the-emergency became our family doctor, but he had retired a couple of years before my cat bite.

      “I'll call his old number anyway. He turned his business over to someone, maybe the new doctor has the same number. But I'll have to do some quick talking to explain who we are and ask if he can see you tonight. Oh great! It's Thursday. Doctors traditionally take Thursdays off. I'm not going to be able to find any doctor today! Why did you let this happen on a Thursday?”

      I don't think Mom ate her dinner that night. She was too ill because I had ruined her evening.

      She called the old doctor's phone number which was indeed the doctor who took over's phone number, and explained the whole story: patients of the former doctor, daughter with an emergency, possibly see her that night? When Mom stopped to take a breath, the person on the other end explained that the new doctor was off on Thursdays, she herself was the answering service. Mom was mad.

      “Well, I've heard about this doctor in Hamburg who is rather unconventional. He does not take appointments! You just walk in and wait your turn. Maybe he is unconventional enough to not be off on Thursdays. All I want after a long day at work is to come home to peace and quiet. But no. I'm the mother. I have to find a doctor for my daughter who does have the common sense to not pick up strange cats.”

      Mom said these last few lines while looking for the big phone book and looking up the name of the quirky doctor she had heard about.

      Then she called his number.

      The doctor himself actually answered the phone!

      And Mom quickly sputtered out her story: family doctor retired, daughter has emergency, could he see her tonight? When Mom stopped to take a breath, the doctor told her that he is off on Thursdays! But if all I had was a cat bite, I was not going to die during the night, and he told Mom she could bring me during his office hours the next day.

      “Well, I'll have to take some time off of work, but if we get there just before his office opens, we should not have to wait too long.” Mom was relieved to have done her Mom job; her evening of peace and quiet could finally begin, and I was not going to die in my sleep!

      The next day, Mom and I were at the quirky doctor's office about five minutes before his hours began. There was already a line outside his locked door that went down the sidewalk of his front yard. I wondered how we were supposed to know when our turn was? But after the door opened and we went into the waiting room and the waiting room filled up and a line formed again outside and went all the way down the sidewalk to the street, I realized that I could easily remember who arrived after me, and when there was no one left in the room except people who got there after I did, then it would be my turn next! It was a good distraction from the pain that my hand was still woefully in.

       So after a while, it was finally my turn to see the doctor. His office was an old house, and the examining room was the kitchen of the old house. Quite handy, actually. There were cabinets and counters and a sink – the examining table was narrow enough to fit in the room without making it look crowded – all quite functional. The doctor grabbed my right hand and started pressing on the plump, swollen skin! “Got a cat bite, did ya?”

      I winced in pain. A giant tear formed in the corner of each eye.

     Then he saw the ring on my right hand ring finger.

     “Get that ring off!”

     With all the bravado I could muster I said, “The ring does not come off!” A couple of Christmases before, Mom had given me a ring – and when I put it on, the fit was a little snug, so I took it as a sign that I should never take it off again. Making a stand to the doctor like that was my way of remaining true to the proclamation I had made that Christmas morning.

      “It's either the ring or your finger, you decide.”

       The nurse and I started tugging and twisting and yanking- it hurt a lot! – and the finger was way too swollen to coax a ring that would not come off even in normal circumstances.The nurse said, "I think we'll have to cut the ring off, Doctor.”

      “No, we won't need to do that.”

      The Doc then pulled me over to the sink where he turned on the water and soaped up my hand and fingers and ring. As he twisted and yanked on the ring, the doctor explained that whenever there is a trauma to the wrists or hands or fingers it is very important to remove all jewelry immediately – otherwise there is a risk of circulation being cut off if swelling occurs. He said to the nurse, “Bring me a spool of thread!”

      “Oh I've heard of that – it doesn't work; you're going to have to cut the ring off.” And with that, the nurse handed the Doc a spool of thread.

      I tried to back away – this meeting with the doctor was getting more and more painful by the minute!

      He had a firm grip on me, and then the doctor had a firm grip on the end of the thread. He started to wind the thread around my finger as tightly as he possibly could! How many atrocities could this man come up with? Of course he had started the winding of the thread at the plumpest part of my finger – right by the ring where it hurt the most, first from the swelling and then from the yanking and twisting and now the abomination of the thread, tight thread, and soap, and the doctor lecturing and the nurse saying, “This isn't going to work!”

      When the doc had about an inch of my finger tightly tightly wound in thread, he touched the ring ever so slightly, and it slid up my finger and popped off the end!

      The nurse said, “Well I'll be! I'll have to remember that one!”

      The doctor handed me my ring. Any sentiment I had had for the ring before the trip to the sink was at this point completely gone, never to return.

      They could have cut the ring off for all I cared.

      The soap was rinsed off of my fingers and hand.

      The doctor said that the inside of a cat's mouth is very dirty, and a cat's teeth has many germs. So my hand had gotten an infection from the cat bite.

      He gave me a prescription for an antibiotic and started walking me to the door.

     “Yep, a cat-bite infected hand. That's what that is. Yeah. Uh, well it's either a cat-bite infected hand, or......hmmmmm,... or it could be cat scratch fever – but if it's cat scratch fever, there's nothing I can do about it and you're going to die. We'll know in six months. Time will tell.”

       With that he pushed me out the door while the nurse called for the next patient.

       A little unconventional and quirky?

       Well time did indeed tell.

       I did not die from cat scratch fever six months later.

       And I did not die three weeks later when even up until the last hour before the prom there was still a flicker of possibility that I might get asked, and then it was gone.

       Time would tell.

       To all you guys, Hamburg High Class of 1971 who chose to take someone else to the prom, instead of me, I hope your prom story is still something worth telling to friends and family fortyfive years later. Because last month I told my prom story, the one about a cat-bite, to a barroom full of people! 

       They gave me a sincere “Aw!” after my opening line, and they laughed in all the right places after that.

        And two guys with cameras and sound equipment immortalized the story on film.

       I'm going to be on TV!

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