The Pot and the Kettle

In 1967, there was a somewhat distasteful tradition at Lorrington Academy, a then all-boys private boarding prep school near Agawam, just over the Connecticut River from Longmeadow, in western Massachusetts. To this day, I cringe at the memory of that observance, known as “The Pig Pot.” You see, in order to socialize the boys at a single gender school, Lorrington would bus in girls from various New England all-girls private boarding schools on many Saturday nights during the school year for a dance in our school gym. It wasn’t quite the usual high school dance that one might imagine from public school days, where students chose their dates ahead of time. Nor was it the proverbial “mixer,” where no one had a date but the two genders were assembled to “mingle” and match up (or, at least, that was the goal of such arrangements). No, Saturday night dances at Lorrington had the boys paired to their girl dates by matching age and heights after the girls’ bus Saturday arrival. The boys would line by age group, and then by descending height, at one end of the gym, and the girls lined up on the other side the same way. Then the magic began, as one of each gender at the front of the line would approach each other and be introduced by a Lorrington faculty chaperone and his counterpart from the girl’s school.

Yes, shorter girls were relegated to short boys and, because there was no mandatory attendance at these dances, sometimes boys and girls of different ages were assigned together once one age group of a gender was depleted. When “dates” were introduced to each other, some of us (from either school) had the politeness to smile and extend a hand to shake, or at least to show no disappointment in the physical make-up of our newly assigned dance date. Others, again both boys and girls, were not so self-possessed, and I can remember some of the most hateful grimaces from dates, some of which displayed emotional revulsion which would be continued throughout the dance. In short, those dances were a crap shoot and mostly disappointing to most of us, but with our hormonal explosion of puberty, we all craved touching something soft. On the rare occasion that you and your date felt compatible enough, the boy would ask his date at the dance’s end if, when next their schools were scheduled for a dance, he could “pre-arrange” for his date to be assigned to him once more, and thereby avoid the abhorrent line-up.

Lorrington boys were given two choices: attend the dance or go to the main school auditorium to watch an old, romantic comedy or drama movie, selected for its sanitized blandness rather than feeding our desperation for female nudity. (The only time we saw racy content was the exhibition of the 1963 version of Cleopatra, with abundant shots of the more than ample cleavage of Elizabeth Taylor).

About 40 boys opted for the dance each evening. Many boys never attended a Saturday night dance, but for me, hope sprang eternal, and having been subjected to early ballroom dance classes by my mother (possibly as one of her projects to ensure grandchildren would eventually result), I had the confidence to at least attempt hoofing it at the gym, and so I usually took my chances at Saturday night dances. The unwritten law at Lorrington was that whoever was “assigned” to you, that was your companion for the night, and no classmate would ever try seeking to “snake away” another boy’s more attractive “date.”

The Pig Pot, as it was offensively named, had both negative and positive aspects. The boys at the dance who wished to participate would contribute a dollar to the Pot prior to the date assignments. Every Lorrington boy received an allowance of one dollar per week (which was a lot of money for an unemployed teenager in those days), which most of us used to purchase milk shakes and candy in the school snack bar in the basement under the main Administration Building. So having a dollar to gamble on Pig Pot may seem trivial now, but at the time it was a dear sum for quite a risky wager. Here’s what we bet upon: the boy with the most unattractive date (as judged only by the upper classmen with pre-arranged dates) would receive the Pig Pot, sometimes worth up to thirty dollars!

The somewhat positive side of the Pig Pot was that, in order to be eligible for the prize, the winner had to remain with his date for the entire dance and, likewise, the date would need to have remained with the boy for the entire dance. What was the alternative? The girl could anytime depart and go back and wait in the bus which delivered her to Lorrington, and the boy could depart through the restroom window and walk to the Auditorium, where he would be marked in attendance (but subject to slap-on-the-wrist punishment -- such as weekend work shelving books in the school library -- for his abandonment of his date).

Mr. Darton, an English teacher at Lorrington without a family (or, for that matter, a date) with whom to spend Saturday night, was always a chaperone at the Lorrington Saturday night dances. Many of the boys would introduce their dates to him, perhaps in an effort to portray some mature adult relationship to impress the girl; I never did, because Mr. Darton never seemed to smell right, up close. But I later learned that he was fully aware of the Pig Pot tradition but did nothing to discourage it. Some of us surmised that his indifference was the result of a calloused heart precipitated by many female rejections.

At one such dance during my sophomore year, Lorrington boys hosted students from the McConner School for Girls, from nearby Westfield, Massachusetts. As usual, at the encouragement of the upper classmen, and as a weak, conforming boy, I contributed to the Pig Pot, to be “one of the guys.” It was, and still is, a regrettable investment.

From the usual line-up process, I was assigned to Doris Salisbury, an extremely slender, significantly freckled redhead girl about my height who bore the additional unfortunate trappings of teenagerhood: dental braces and acne. I offered my hand to introduce myself, “Doris, I’m Peter Blaine.” To which she gave a most obvious loud sigh of disappointment.

Immediately realizing my uphill battle in coaxing an eventual smile from my assigned date, I began the approach taught to me by my father: (a) make cordial, and even jovial, conversation so that my lack of physical attractiveness would be somewhat assuaged by witty banter and (b) pepper my conversation with questions eliciting information about the girl’s favorite subject -- herself.

“I’m from Carmel, Indiana, Doris. Where do you hail from?” The response was silence and a look away from me as if she were deaf.

“What’s your favorite subject at McConner?” Still nothing. Finally, after several more failed attempts: “Doris, is there something I can say which may reduce your revulsion of me, and we can possibly tolerate our time together?”

She turned to me with a stone face and uttered, “I will never come to another one of these dances again.”

“Look,” I bowed my head and raised it to actually have eye contact with her. “It’s okay with me if you just go back to the bus. While I’d rather you stay, I don’t want this to be a painful experience for you. I’m actually a really good dancer.”

It appeared to me that she’d realized that she was stuck with me because she shrugged her shoulders, exhibited the slightest of grins in an “Oh, all right” face and said, “Sorry, what was your name again?”

Just then the recorded music started with Johnny Mathis singing “Misty,” and I grabbed her hand, placed my palm on the small of her back and proceeded to guide her in my best fox trot. While I thought that my choreography was exemplary, she spent the entirety of the song gazing longingly at the more attractive boys on the dance floor. Nevertheless, the proverbial ice had been broken, and we started to have kind, if simple, conversation between dances.

As usual, several boys “ditched” their dates, and several of the girls returned to their bus, so that the table with the punchbowl and cookies at the rear of the gym would usually have two or three singles of each gender standing near, idly awaiting the end of the evening at 9 pm. I know that Doris would have gladly traded me in for any of the “spares” available, but she was kind enough to remain with me for the entire evening.

At about 8:15 pm, Doris excused herself to use the restroom (the gym had the large men’s room and a single-use ladies’ room for visitors), and Don Sellers, an upperclassman, brushed by me and whispered, “Stay with her, Blaine, my boy, the Pot is in the bag!” Don had a pre-arranged date, a very fetching girl with platinum blond hair. I didn’t think that Doris qualified for his assessment, after looking at the other girls in the gym. Of course, until she reappeared, I didn’t know whether Doris had excused herself in order to go back to her bus.

But she did return, and we danced the “Twist” to the voice of Chubby Checker (whose name I surmised was derivative of a contemporary singer, Fats Domino). Finally, the 9:00 pm bell rang, and the girls all left their dates to depart. Doris was kind enough to extend her hand and nod, with a look I interpreted to mean that she had bravely withstood the torture of my company and was now relieved to be done with me.

I smiled and shook her hand and said, “Thanks for a lovely evening, Doris.” I was, however, not naïve enough to ask her if I could pre-arrange a date with her when McConner girls returned for a Lorrington dance; I’d had enough rejection for one night.

After all of the girls had departed, the boys remained to clean the gym so that it would be pristine for the next day’s use. A senior, Earl Crosley, approached me and extended a white business envelope, exclaiming: “Blaine, you are a man among men for sticking it out with that ‘lady’ (and I use the term loosely). She appeared to spend the whole night with an ‘I smell vomit’ face. Most unkissable puss of the evening.”

I took the envelope and, while putting it into my breast pocket, thanked Earl and began to walk out of the gym to return to my dormitory. Just then, Mr. Darlton, who apparently was within earshot of Crosley’s award ceremony, approached me from the rear and put his hand on my shoulder to stop my exit.

I see that you’re tonight’s winner of the Pig Pot, eh Mr. Blaine?”

“Uh… You know about the Pig Pot, sir?” I responded.

“From my conversations with the older faculty members, apparently the Pig Pot has been a Lorrington tradition since these dances began decades ago.”

“But didn’t the School ever try to stop it?” I asked.

“Apparently not, after they discovered that the girls had their own Pig Pot at every dance. Of course, each school had a different name for it; for the McConner School for Girls, it was ‘The Dog Derby’ and at the Longmeadow Girls School, it’s ‘The Beast Bank.’ You look ashamed, Mr. Blaine, why so glum?”

“I’m kind of embarrassed with the whole process, Mr. Darlton. I only chipped in to the Pot out of peer pressure. Frankly, I’m ashamed of myself.”

“Well, don’t worry about it, Blaine. Miss Potter, the McConner school chaperone, told me that your date was also a winner tonight. So, congratulations to you both.” He flashed a sardonic smile, patted me on the shoulder and walked briskly away, seemingly proud of this unflattering revelation he’d bestowed upon me.

I was, of course, ambivalent about receiving our Pot while my date had been allegedly similarly enriched, and when I told my friends about my encounter with Mr. Darlton after the dance, they were somewhat amused that their own physical attractiveness (or lack thereof) was the reciprocal subject of an identical contest from the “fairer” sex. Nevertheless, they never let me forget that I was the date of the Dog Derby winner.