There is one specific hurtful night at The Concord Hotel that sticks with me. It happened on New Year's Eve of 1963 going into 1964 at the Concord Hotel. I had planned my outfit well in advance. I wore a blue velvet and white satin dress with a green silk sash and had my shoes dyed green to match the dress. My mother told me I would be sitting that night at a table with other teens, all of whom were total strangers to me. My sister sat at a pre teen table and my parents sat at a table with other adults. So there I was, at a round table with 3 other girls and 4 boys. The girls were pretty, very blond and giving off a real Sandra Dee vibe. The boys looked like Frankie Avalon or maybe Fabian. And I looked sort of like a fat ugly version of Annette Funicello with acne. I opened my eyes real wide for our family photo that night because the previous night in the first family photo my eyes were closed.
For some reason, all of those teens at my table decided to abandon our table number 10 and join table 11, which had some empty seats. So all 7 of them filled those empty sets and left me sitting all alone. I thought I should at last try to sit with them so I got up and boldly asked if they could fit me and my chair in. One of those boys brazenly said: "There is no room" and the girls laughed.
I sat back alone at my table and and I cried... I was so overwhelmed with sadness. I was so hurt. I was not going to sit there and eat alone. My face must have been soaking wet because when I left that table and I went to the other side of that dining room to tell my mother I was going back up to the room, she did ask: "What happened?" But I quickly fled out of that ballroom and went upstairs.
When I was back in the room, I put on the TV and watched "Not As A Stranger" with Frank Sinatra and Robert Mitchum. Every time I see that movie on TCM... I remember that night.
And oh, those teens from that night? Who knows where they are now. They are probably almost 80 and not looking any more like Fabian. Good riddance.
After that night, I aged into this... so I now look back on that night and wish I had handled it differently. I should have flipped that table so fast and hard that Teresa Giudice, in later years, would be jealous.
