The Prom Queen

Jeremy Vintner knocked on my door yesterday. I recognized him immediately - he married the Prom Queen.

Windy King won every beauty contest she entered at my small high school of one hundred students. With perfect chesnut curls tumbling down her back, bangs feathered to the side in the style of the day, and superbly straight teeth fresh out of braces, we knew better than to nominate anyone else from our class. Every vote went her way: Christmas Queen, Homecoming Queen, Prom Queen, Corn Festival Queen - not that there was a Corn Festival Queen, but rest assured, if there had been, she'd have won that crown, too.

Windy wasn't the friendliest girl. If you'd asked me thirty years ago, I'd have told you she was stuck-up, or a snob. I didn't use words like "bitch" until I was in college, but I probably thought that about her, too. She seemed more interested in what she thought of other people, than in what other people thought of her. With more experience, I recognize she was probably just shy. She was probably as insecure about her social skills as I was about my looks. God gives us all unique gifts; Windy's was the ability to capture a crown.

After high school, we both attended colleges in the same small town twelve hours away from home. I attended a college recognized for its academic and social life, she chose a conservative Christian college on the other side of town - where they separated the boys and the girls for everything, including classes. We used to make fun of that college. She went there with her new boyfriend, Jeremy.

I saw her out on the town once my freshman year. I had just started dating my first real college boyfriend, someone who really liked me. Someone who was willing to do more than say 'meet me at the keg party, there's free beer!', but to actually invite me out to dinner - and pay. I didn't know it at the time, but George attended the same college as Windy and Jeremy - where they separated the boys and the girls for everything, including classes.

My new boyfriend, thinking I wouldn't give him the time of day, had lied to me and told me he went to the more liberal men's college in the center of town. I'd believed him. I guess he figured we had enough differences between us - he being black, me being white - we didn't need to discuss religion, too.

I was still adjusting to my own feelings, of being a southern white girl dating a wonderful boy who happened to be black, when we walked into the restaurant and saw Jeremy and Windy. Jeremy greeted George as if he'd known him forever, while I tried to cover my embarrassment at being discovered. We chatted briefly, then went our separate ways.

I never saw Windy, again. She left school that year, went home, got married and lived out the Prom Queen's life. I hadn't really thought of her in years until yesterday when her husband - now ex-husband - came to my house to inspect for termites. He told me they'd divorced after twenty-one years of marriage. He looked kind of sad when he said it, as if being married to a Prom Queen wasn't quite as perfect a life I'd assumed it would be.

George and I didn't date for long. He transferred to a college out of state the next year and, although he'd come see me whenever he was in town, our dating relationship didn't survive the distance. I still hear from him now and again. He's married to a wonderful woman and they have two children: a son and a daughter. He called recently and said his daughter had been elected Prom Queen. I wish her well.