I was 16, and a hopeless romantic fighting to be practical. I wanted to go to the Junior-Senior prom, but instinctively know no one would ask me. My classmates and I had already been through the preliminary middle school dances together, and everyone knew: Connie couldn't dance. In fact, if you tried to pretend she could, you just ended up with bruises on your shins and scuff marks on the toes of your shoes. I asked a sophomore friend if he would go along, and got a shockingly flat "no." Apparently, word gets around.
My mom suggested I ask an older guy - Bryan, a friend of the family who was home from college for a semester, who I volunteered with in a drama team. He was four years older than me, had an earring, and listened to the Black-Eyed Peas, and being a college guy from Asheville, he was pretty much over the stupid, self-conscious insecurities of high school. So taking me to my prom didn't make him flinch at all.
He decided we needed to get to know each other a little better before then. So he came over to hang out at our house, and he drove our family's rediculous full-sized monster van. We decided to go to dinner on prom night with my best friend and her date, and that we'd go bowling afterward and come back to my parents' house for breakfast, and he teased that he was renting a powder-blue tux. But we never discussed the elephant in the room... that I couldn't dance.
What I didn't realize at the time was how much he was paying attention to the way I maneuvered my wheelchair, or how many Fred Astaire movies he watched that month (in case you are unaware, Fred was famous for being able to dance with anything and anyone).
On the day of the prom, Bryan pulled up to my parents' house in his topless, doorless Jeep Wrangler. I hadn't noticed that my family had cleared the driveway of all the cars and swept it clean, to create a dance floor. Bryan turned on some old Rat Pack music in his jeep, stepped out in a black tux with top hat and cane (he knew how to be very classy), and asked me to dance.
He held my left hand while I drove with my right, and he explained how he would lead me by the way he held my hand. We could waltz and swing together before we left the house. And yes, we danced all night.
I think that is one of the most romantic things a guy has ever done for me - just taking the time to pay attention to the little details, in order to give me the gift of strength and grace, and to make me forget what I cannot do, for one magical night.
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