CLEVELAND, Ohio – When I was in high school, you needed a date to go to the Homecoming dance.

Maybe not technically. But in 1994, when I was a freshman at Revere, it was unthinkable for a group of girlfriends to go together. And only the bravest girls asked boys. The rest of us whispered to each other with our fingers crossed.

I did ask a date my junior year, steeling my nerves and my roiling stomach to call a boy at another school. I’d even bought a dress. He turned me down, though. And feeling utterly humiliated, I stayed home with my fellow dateless friends, grateful at least that no one at our school was gossiping about my rejection.

I didn’t go to Homecoming until I was a senior, when a cute boy from my math class asked me. In my memory, he sidled up to me after a girls soccer game

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