Real Class

I frequently find myself disconcerted by some of the differences between kids now and kids back when I fit that description. They don’t finish sentences, they text while you’re talking to them, they believe Wikipedia is a legitimate source…you know the rant.

Fortunately for my peace of mind and the future of the human race, I occasionally see signs that the youngsters are more socially adept than I might have thought. I saw an example last night or actually, photos and film of an example. Daughter Two was asked to prom by a young guy with real class.

He knew of course that Daughter Two had been a leader of her robotics team and that she’s off to MIT in the fall to study engineering. So he made five cardboard robots, each of which held up a sign that collectively asked her to the prom. The guy himself was holding the last sign – “ME” – and a bouquet of flowers.

The really cool part was that he set all this up in the lobby of the performing arts complex and stood there waiting for Daughter Two to come out of rehearsal and see the proposal. Which of course meant that in addition to the several friends who helped him set up and who stood by to make the photographic record, he had to bear the looks of everyone who walked by and of course, the entire cast of Pippin, with no guarantee that things would go his way.

It took real class. In my day, you asked the girl over the telephone after weeks of indecision, skulking on the upstairs phone so no one else could hear in case the girl for any of a thousand reasons that played through your mind as you listened to the rings and wondered if it was still too late to just hang up but didn’t because you couldn’t decide if you were more afraid of her picking up as you hung up and knowing somehow it was you or  of her actually answering or even worse, one of her parents answering and asking what this is regarding but then she’s there on the phone and you croak out a facsimile of the Big Question, and then can’t remember the rest of the call after she says yes.

I would NEVER have asked a girl the Big Question in person, much less in front of people, much less with cameras rolling.

So, hats off to Cody and all the other guys with more cojones than moi. There’s hope for the future.