My Harvard Date

By JOHN PAUL NEWPORT '76

I prepped for Harvard—if prepped is the right word for it—at a large public high school in Fort Worth, Texas. The dominant social activity there was going out on dates. From the day I turned sixteen and got my driver’s license until I graduated, I took girls out on dates as often as possible in our family’s Dodge.

We went to the Jack-in-the-Box (my first date), to the movies and to the Six Flags amusement park. I took dates to the junior prom and the senior prom, on both occasions wearing a goofy rented tuxedo and presenting my date with a large corsage.

I blush to think about all this now, of course, but at the time dating seemed pretty cool. Then I got to Harvard and, without thinking any more about it than I would have thought about asking my roommates to head over to the Casa B. for drinks, I asked a cute girl I had noticed in my introduction-to-psychology class out on a date.

After the lecture one morning, I ambled down to where she was sitting, introduced myself, and said, “So, I was wondering if you might want to go with me to a Judy Collins concert in Boston Friday night.”

The instant those words popped out of my mouth, I knew that everything about the proposition was wrong.