Confessions of a Commodore

I think about her every year around this time, so last week, a few decades after we parted ways, I decided to find out if she was still alive. I thought I might get a whatever-happened-to column out of it, but when I finally heard her voice, I realized I wanted to talk to her about something I never talk to anyone about, because who else on earth would understand?

Her name was Anne Marie Harvanko. I was six years old, she was seven, ours was an arranged romance. Don't ask how or why, but we ended up as junior royalty in the Minneapolis Aquatennial, representing the Boulevard Center Business Association. I wore a commodore cap and suit, she a queen's gown and crown, and for three weeks, we sweated through daily events we got dragged to by our moms--hers an Aquatennial-loving mother of two living vicariously through her daughter, mine an Aquatennial-loving mother of six wondering, What the hell was I thinking when I signed up for this?

Our job was to look royally cute at luncheons, rehearsals, nursing homes, coronations. We were crash-taught etiquette: "The boy always escorts his queen," read the parents' handbook. "They will be shown how to hold their queen's hand and should be instructed that they never leave her side. Help him by teaching him to assist his queen up and down stairs and the common courtesy of being a gentleman. The first thing you know, it'll be automatic."

Arm in arm, we visited all the local television stations, including the old KMSP studio in the Foshay Tower and the WTCN studio in the Calhoun Beach Club, which at the time was hallowed home to local legends Lunch With Casey and All-Star Wrestling. We rode in parades and waved like we'd been taught at crowds in Hopkins (Raspberry Festival), north Minneapolis (North Side Parade), northeast Minneapolis (East Side Parade), and downtown Minneapolis, where our pony-theme float tooled down Hennepin Avenue and beyond, past Dayton's, Donaldson's, and the weather ball. The city was at our feet. I'm pretty sure my brothers and sisters hated my guts.

We were young. Special. Royalty. And then, after the torchlight parade--about as romantic as anything gets for a couple still fending off boy and girl germs--it was over. We never said goodbye, our parents never got us together for old times' sake, and, because we played it down throughout and since, it was no big deal that we didn't stay in touch. But when I got her on the line after looking up her father in the phone book the other day ("It's kind of been downhill for you two ever since then," he cracked, before giving me her number), she gasped at the mention of my name and said she had goose bumps.

The next morning, I drove out to her home in Apple Valley. We hugged at the door. She put out Rice Krispie bars, brownies, and coffee. We sat at her dining room table, on top of which rested a yellowed article about six-and-seven-year-old us from the Minneapolis Star and a black-and-white photo of us in full junior royalty regalia, wearing expressions that suggested we could break into a medley of "Anywhere's Better Than Here," "You Get Paid To Smile," and "The Ballad Of Jon-Benet" at the drop of a corsage.

"We were special, but we weren't quite sure why," she said, her auburn eyes and hair still beautiful, neither one of us able to fully get our minds around the adult Us now before us. "I hated it, and yet I liked being special. Getting that hair permed--I can still smell it. And I had to wear white gloves all the time... I remember the Queen of the Lakes, and how beautiful she was, and I always wanted to be Queen of the Lakes. My mother always wanted to be Queen of the Lakes, but her mother--strict Catholic upbringing--didn't believe in beauty pageants."

She's on her third marriage; I'm on my first. She's got three kids; I've got two. She'll be a grandmother for the first time next week and her youngest just graduated from high school; my youngest would kill for the gown and tiara she wore during our Aquatennial heyday. She works as a CPA, takes night classes, and, frankly, unlike the recovering suburban beauty queen I might have expected, she's got soul; the kind that's readily evident upon (re)meeting her. "I've always done what I've had to do," she said, jutting her jaw out slightly. "Whatever it's taken."

We compared notes on what it all meant. She talked about how her dad used to embarrass her by telling potential boyfriends, "You know, she was a princess." I told her how I distinctly remember at the end of the three weeks, standing on a stage with the rest of the commodores and princesses, waiting to be crowned to go on to the next round of junior fabulousness. When they put the white hat and crown on some other couple, I felt like I'd let everybody down, because by the end I didn't try to hide that I wasn't into it, that I wasn't trying my hardest to be a perfect little gentleman. I felt like the judges had looked into my soul and seen what I'd known all along: I wasn't special, and I didn't do anything to deserve any of this.