I am waiting for the boy to ask me to dance. My feelings are controlled and determined by junior high school-aged boys. The best jitterbugger never asks me. My high school years will bring me popularity in dating older boys. But this is middle school years in the fifties, and my pride is in the hands of boys who do the asking.

The most popular boy in school lives across the street. He is a basketball star, although he has not yet grown into a man’s height. He is the best dancer in my neighborhood group of friends. He always dances with the girls who will also kiss him. He knows how good-looking he is even at twelve. There is a line of females competing to dance with him, to be his girlfriend for a night, a week, a month. He is a sassy charmer. He knows he is number one.

I am not one of the girls who wants him but I like to watch the revolving door of his momentary picks. And what I really love is to watch him dance. He is a great dancer who has impeccable rhythm and knows all the latest steps. He is dazzling on the dance floor even in sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

One day I am twelve and the next I am sixty-three. The decades have brought me the marriage of my dreams, three incredible careers and a life in which I have been me. One of my greatest passions is dancing.

My childhood girlfriend is coming into town to attend the 50th anniversary of our high school. She talks me into going. I am not sure why she has to talk me into attending because I loved high school. I was president of my junior class and spent four years being part of many activities. Although my junior high school classmates were there with me, interacting with new people was what I loved about high school.

I am not sure that this type of party, which is open to graduating classes spanning fifty years, will offer quality time to reminisce and visit. I receive some phone calls from old friends who have come to town. I decide to go.

It is a small group of my classmates who attend, maybe fifteen or so. Most of these classmates were with me in junior high as well as high school. I am thrilled to see them. One man walks up to me and says my name. I struggle to recognize his face. He then says his name and smiles. It is the star dancer of my adolescence, my former neighbor, the jock my pre-teen girlfriends lusted after.

We catch up on the moments that have brought us through six decades. As others arrive, I greet them and am greeted warmly. Everyone looks well. Sixty-three never looked better. These are the people of my youth. Their place in my life is a special one. The memories we share together are our beginning years.

The band is getting ready to play the oldies of the 50s and 60s. As the music begins, I walk toward the dance floor and turn. He catches my eye as I extend my hand toward him motioning for him to join me on the dance floor. The best jitterbugger in sixth grade takes my hand, and we engage together in a graceful and wild ride, singing the words to every song to which we are dancing. He is still a great dancer.

When our dance ends, I motion to another childhood male friend and then another. Each man joins me on the dance floor, one at a time. As boys, I had never danced with any of them. Now I am enjoying their individual style and movements. On that dance floor they are meeting me for the first time. And it is I who has asked them. I chose and picked the males with whom I wanted to dance that night.

One of my sisters is also there. When I talk to her at the end of the night, she tells me how wonderful I danced, and how exciting it was that all the boys/men wanted to dance with me.

I smile to myself. I will always love the girl who was twelve and watched the dancers but a woman of sixty-three never felt better on the dance floor.

It started as a typical first class of the new semester. Twenty-five faces were starring at me with the fear of college students who would prefer to be anywhere in the world other than a public speaking class. As I looked back at them with all the empathy I could express, I asked that everyone wearing hats please remove them. They looked at me with the confusion of a generation unfamiliar with such etiquette.

The hats were removed, except for one young man. When I asked him directly, he answered “no.” I was shocked, but did not show it. Not ten minutes into the session and in front of new students, whom I was meeting for the first time, I was being challenged. How I handled this moment could determine semester survival. My semester survival.

The students were intently watching me and waiting. It was my move. I decided not to deal publicly with this challenge to my authority so I asked to see the young man after class. His name was Mark, and he looked like the most unlikely of all the students to express insubordination. He was slight in build, clean cut with a pleasant face. He was not someone who stood out among the others. Yet, he had said no to a directive from his new professor, in front of new classmates, on the first day of the new semester. There would be no choice. I had to convince him to do what the others were asked. He would have to back down.

Fast forward. It is the final week of the semester. Mark asks me to stay after class. He has something to tell me which he has kept secret all this time.

I have come to know him as a gifted poet and hard working student. Harder than most, perhaps, because Mark is suffering from MS which has affected his vocal cords. Some days the class and I understand him better than others.

“Do you remember the first day of class when I refused to remove my hat?” he asks. “Oh yes I do,” I answer. “Well, I would like to tell you why I did that,” he says shyly.

“About a year ago, I went to an open forum to read my poetry. They laughed at me.” “They what?” I asked, not wanting to believe what I was hearing.

“They laughed.”

His speech was labored and painfully slow. “I was humiliated.”

We were alone in my classroom looking at one another through our tears.

“The first day of speech class when I refused to remove my hat I was trying to get you to throw me out. The course was required, but I did not want to ever stand before an audience again. But, you would not give up on me. You would not let me leave.”

“You chose to stay, Mark,” I answered softly.

For his final persuasive speech, Mark spoke on stem cell research funding. He passionately argued for our government to acknowledge that it is his quality of life they are ignoring and for his classmates to vote for legislators who would make the stem cell reality happen. We all agonizingly wondered if it would be soon enough for him.

After offering an articulate and informed argument, with great difficulty Mark walked to his visual aid which was an empty white poster board. He asked his audience to give him one thing. Only one thing. He picked up a marker and with a shaking hand, one painstaking letter at a time, he wrote, “HOPE.”

That day Mark stood out in a way no one else could. It was he who gave us hope.