The Pony Needs Two-A-Days For Optimal Training

It will probably come as no surprise to you that The Pony has no game. Not only does he have no game, but he has no idea how to buy a ticket to attend the game, no knowledge of the players, not an inkling of the practice it takes to enter the game, and most definitely no clue how to score.

The Pony made no plans to attend prom this year. “Meh. I went last year. There’s nobody I want to go with.” So sayeth The Pony. I told him many of the younger gals would probably like to go to prom, but alas, they couldn’t unless an upperclassman asked them. Nobody at Newmentia appealed to him, he said. I suggested he go alone. Or with a friend. Nope. Not worth going. The ticket-buying deadline came and went.

I thought no more about it. Two weeks later, an email came out that prom ticket sales would be open again for two weeks. So offhandedly, at a Smartypants Team meet, before the first game, I told The Pony, “I see that prom tickets are on sale again for two weeks. You can’t get the gift bag, but you can get a ticket.” The Pony pricked (heh, heh, you KNOW what I said) up his ears and pranced over to my library table.

“What? They’re selling them again?”

“Yeah. But no gift bag.”

“Hmm…good to know.”

On the way home, he revealed that a little gal on his Smartypants Team had been talking to him. Indeed, Farmer H reported that his coach had said, “When we stop to eat, the guys all act crazy, but The Pony is always sitting with the girls.” And that very afternoon, Farmer H and I, approaching from different ends of the hall, had caught The Pony surrounded by the three girls on the team, with one of them squealing and swatting at him.

“She’s chasin’ you, or you’re chasin’ him!” Said Farmer H, not one to nurture the tender self-esteem of a teenager. Which caused a bit of an eye-opening in both parties in the ensuing days. Both repeating Farmer H’s words, incredulous at the thought, to me at separate times.

“Gally wants to go. Apparently, she had been hinting for a long time, but I never knew. I just knew she was saying, ‘I’d really like to go to prom.’ But I didn’t think she wanted to go with ME. I had no idea.”

“You are SO lame! You could be walking down the hall, and a girl would try to hold your hand, and you’d yank it away and say, ‘Look out! What are you doing? You bumped into me!’”

“Yeah. I’d say, ‘Oh. Did you want some gum?’”

“Or…’The magnet I just used in physics must have attracted your watch to my hand.’”

“Heh, heh. ‘Your magnetic personality was attracted to my watch.’ Now THAT’S a line.”

“You’ve got to start somewhere.”

The next day, I asked if he was getting prom tickets. “Uh huh. On Monday, first thing, as soon as they go on sale.”

“So Gally said she’d go?”

“Uh huh. I told her I’d buy her ticket. I even offered to pay for her dress.”

Some things never change. Pity the player. Not the game.