The Bombshell of Roosevelt High

It was a Friday at Roosevelt High School and I was a senior. Fridays were a little different from the other days because as soon as classes were over a matinee dance was held in the auditorium.  I never considered going to the Mat Dance because it seemed like an event created for those students who were campus elites, who were going steady with someone and who enjoyed being stared at as they filed into the  auditorium - or all of the above.  On this particular Friday a girl sitting behind me passed me a note and asked me if I would go to the Mat Dance with her.  Being stared at was bad enough but this was no ordinary girl.  She was an instant bombshell at Roosevelt High. Even her name, Armand Sigmund, had an aura of mystery about it.  I’m not sure what made her so riveting.   Maybe it was the way she walked.  On one occasion she turned a male student assembly into a near riot when she appeared on stage.  We never found out whether she was going to sing, dance or read poetry because the whistling, hollering and stomping of feet lasted so long that she finally gave up and ducked behind the curtains.  .  .  . This was the girl who was waiting for an answer about the Mat Dance - so I stalled. The stalling got easier when I was unexpectedly elected class president and had to stand in front of the class - supposedly out of whispering range.  Then she began mouthing the words so visibly that the drama was upstaging everything else that was going on. Ultimately I caved in and accepted the invitation against a backdrop of hushed applause and giggles.  Then I had to experience the ordeal of being stared at as we walked into the auditorium.  Two guys at the doorway noticed the mismatch between us and did double takes.  After that I behaved like a typical introvert - too overly stimulated to act natural, to hold a normal conversation, to comprehend why I was there or why she asked me.  Maybe it was because I was the only tall guy in class or she was bored or maybe I was an easy conquest.  I didn’t consider the possibility that she saw something in me that would have made us a good fit.  After all of the suspense nothing much happened. The whole thing was so out of character for me that I never asked her for a future date nor do I remember even talking to her again.  Furthermore, I didn’t tell anyone about it, because I couldn’t think of a way to make it sound believable.  But a couple of weeks later my best friend was describing a new hotspot for teenagers, called the Shack.  In the process of convincing me that it was the coolest place in town to hang out, he offered one piece of solid evidence.  Armand Sigmund would be there.  I thought that I was about to experience a surge in popularity so I told him that I had had a date with her a few weeks earlier.   He said absolutely nothing.  I guess it wasn't believable.  After that, the episode disappeared from my active memory until one of my children told me that I needed to disclose all the interesting details of my life, even the weird ones.  So as I composed this story seventy-two years later, the writing process made me realize that the story wasn’t finished. There is an epilogue.   

  Epilogue

Just about every tortured detail of the story matches the descriptions of a highly sensitive person (HSP).  HSPs think more deeply, more likely to be mentally overstimulated, experience a higher level of emotional intensity and are more sensitive to changes in the environment than low sensitive people (LSP) which means that HSPs need more time to process things.  While extroverts and LSPs are impulsively acting out, HSPs are still thinking about it, often being overlooked and occasionally speaking out.  Eventually, I succeeded intellectually, spiritually and socially.  I just had to wait longer to get there. 

The second thing that I noticed during the writing process was how often I used a thesaurus to find the word with just the right nuance of meaning.  I was surprised to realize I was less interested in choosing words with maximum emotional impact and more interested in telling the story exactly the way it happened.  Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised since the theme,"seeing things as they really are," has appeared in my earlier blog posts, at least three times.

Lastly, I am grateful that my parents immunized me against wrongdoing but I did Armand Sigmund a disservice by regarding her as a one-dimensional person, living only in the fast lane. I feel badly that I was so guarded about who I was that once the dance was over I knew nothing more about her and she knew even less about me.  She was still the bombshell of Roosevelt High - nothing more, nothing less.