It’s spring, and “The bells of St. Mary, I hear they are calling, the young loves, the true loves, that come from the sea.” I was on the high school basketball team, and sometimes when we went to a game away, the cheerleaders were with us on the bus. Among them was the class beauty, a girl I almost worshipped.
But the cheerleaders talked among themselves, as did the basketball team. In the closely guarded autonomy of those adolescent years, I never went over to strike up a conversation with her. Neither did any of the other players.
Sometimes we feel it’s just safer to go with the crowd. But after basketball season came the proms, around this time of the year. I asked her to go with me, two years in a row. She turned me down, twice.
Civilization 