When I was in fourth grade I stayed overnight at a friend’s house. She lived a few miles down the road and across the canal and had her own room, something I coveted because of sharing a small bedroom with my younger sister. It must have been in the late fall, because we out shopping in Trenton and all the department stores – Nevius Vorhees is the one name I recall – were adorned with holiday decorations. My friend Karen’s mother was shopping for a dress for a dinner dance. I remember that phrase because it sounded so exotic, like such a grown-up thing to be doing, an event that Samantha and Darren Stevens would have attended. Karen and I spent a good part of the afternoon weaving in and out under all the racks of clothing in the women’s department. Her mother finally settled on a long royal blue dress that appeared to be the height of elegance to my ten year old self. She also bought silver lamé shoes, sparkling and shimmering, they seemed too precious to put on her feet.

When we got back from shopping, Karen and I sat in the kitchen, listening to her mother talk on the phone (I had the impression she was talking with her own mother). She described the dress she had bought, how happy she was with it, and conveyed a sense of incredible excitement about attending the dinner dance. I wondered what it was that adults did at such a party that made it so special. How it could possibly be more exciting than a birthday party, where there were candles and cake and ice cream and presents? Karen’s mother mentioned that she planned to use the shoes the next year with another dress for the next annual party, since the shoes were not exactly everyday attire. She would buy a purse to go with them the next year, because she had already spent too much on the dress and shoes this year. I so wanted to be grown-up at that moment, buying matching glittery shoes and little clutch purses, glamorous evening gowns and accompanying jewelry, getting my hair done in some marvelously upswept style, and doing all those things that adults did at parties.

I think the term “dinner dance” must have gone out of vogue sometime in the 70s because I haven’t heard it again in many years. I’ve never gone to one, never owned a blue evening gown or silver shoes, and still long to find that same sense of anticipation and excitement that Karen’s mother felt that evening.