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I know in our country, we don’t usually have arranged marriages.  But if such a thing were possible, then this would have been the girl.   Everything about her was a perfect match for me.  My mother’s sister, my aunt Annie, lived in Dover, DE and when we were growing up, we’d go down there quite often.  Barbara was cute, short, smart, funny, Jewish.  What wasn’t there to like?  The only thing missing was that electricity, that attraction.  We were perfect together but sparks never flew.

My senior year in High School, I was still nominally dating Amy Meissner and since she lived in California, she was not able to attend my Senior Prom with me.  My next best candidate, Dina Green, was not available as she was busy attending the Prom with her future husband.  As a result, I never went. 

When I was a freshman in college, Barbara was a senior in High School and she invited me to her Senior Prom.  Since I hadn’t attended my own, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to see what I was missing.  I stayed at my Aunt Annie’s house but spent most of that first day and evening with Barbara.   I remember playing Ouija Board with her and I remember her asking the board what we would find at the Prom.  It started spelling out the word Roman.  Clearly it intended to spell the word Romance but I had to stop because it was creeping me out.

Anyway, we went to her Senior Prom and I was bored out of my gourd.  I didn’t know any one there and didn’t have much in common with Barbara’s classmates.  We danced but the dances didn’t produce the feel I had experienced with previous girlfriends.  We went out to breakfast with her “group” but I felt left out and lost.

What happened to the drinking? The debauchery?  I had always heard that the Prom and especially after the Prom was fast-paced and wild.  I missed it all.  This was sedate, quiet, boring; nothing like I expected.

I think that Barbara was disappointed too.  I had always been attracted to her older sister, Maggie, but that was still the time when being younger was a crime.  In fact, one of the main reasons that I attended the University of Michigan was because Maggie went there and recommended it.  But like all the girls older than me, if Maggie were promised to anybody, she was promised to my brother.  I had to make do with the leftovers. 

In some ways, I think the prom was Barbara’s attempt to finally get me to see that she was somebody worth dating in her own right but the whole experience had the opposite effect.  I was still young enough that I wanted that stirring of the heart that comes with the experience of being in love.  Now I know better.  Perhaps she is still available.  Maybe there is still time for this arranged relationship to work.  I look to you, the producers, to answer that question.