I found myself working harder and studying longer, not just for exams but for classes. I became genuinely interested in the material and had conversations about economics with whoever would participate. I was racking up those tens.
In late October, we were given our big assignment for the semester. We would each write a twenty-five-page paper about an aspect of economics. I’d never written anything that long before, and I was worried about how to do it. But since my paper could be about anything, I chose baseball.
I didn’t think I’d get away with that. In grade school, I had to be told that Mets games wouldn’t count for current events assignments. In my seventh-grade unit on poetry, I was asked to stop writing so many poems about baseball. And in ninth-grade English, I was told that W. P. Kinsella’s “Shoeless Joe” didn’t qualify as classic American literature.
“Sure,” Mr. Mikkelsen said when I asked for my topic. “I have no doubt that you’ll take it seriously.”
And I did. I found every library book I could on the subject and watched all eighteen hours of Ken Burns’s Baseball. That paper was the first school assignment I finished early (and the first one where I didn’t make up an extra book in the bibliography to make it seem like I used more sources). I loved writing that paper. It was the first time I’d enjoyed schoolwork since I’d gotten to Hunter.
On the last day before Thanksgiving break, two weeks before the paper was due, Mr. Mikkelsen wasn’t in class. This was not particularly unusual, as teachers got sick, got stuck in traffic, or just took vacation days (as it turns out, some of them were human). Teachers no-showing was common enough that Hunter even had a five-minute rule, where if a teacher (or substitute) didn’t show up by five minutes after the class period started, we were allowed to leave. That was probably not a faculty-endorsed rule, but once we all believed it, that rule may as well have been law. If a teacher showed up ten minutes late, there’d be no class to teach and they couldn’t really punish all of us. The student who first spread that rumor was a genius.
Something was different this time. When we arrived, Mr. Mikkelsen wasn’t there, but a substitute teacher named Mr. Bates was sitting somberly at his desk, not saying a word. Finally, when we were all seated and the class had quieted down, Mr. Bates began to speak.
“As most of you know, Mr. Mikkelsen has been teaching for the last forty-seven years, at Hunter for the last twenty-eight. What you may not know is that he has been battling pancreatic cancer for the last two years. Last night, Mr. Mikkelsen was admitted to the hospital, and it is fairly serious. If you would like to send any cards or flowers, I am sure he would appreciate hearing from his students very much. The address is up on the board.”
Nothing Mr. Bates said after that mattered. We did know that Mr. Mikkelsen had cancer, as he’d mentioned it previously. But he mentioned it in a way that none of us took seriously. Mr. Mikkelsen told us that he was given six months to live two years ago so we shouldn’t always trust expert opinions. We laughed, as we often did when he spoke, and assumed that this giant of a man couldn’t be cut down by something as miniscule as a pancreas. (I think they’re miniscule—I wasn’t very good at biology.)
After economics ended, I found each of my teachers from my afternoon classes and asked if I could be excused so I could leave early for a Thanksgiving trip with my family. A student leaving early for Thanksgiving was a common occurrence, so none of the teachers had a problem with it. Once I was in the clear, I left school to go to the hospital. I was visiting family, in a way. Family I’d known for only ten weeks—but still, family.
Mr. Mikkelsen was no longer the boisterous big man I remembered. He was frail and quiet and looked like if you folded the hospital bed in half, he’d go with it. When I came in, Mr. Mikkelsen’s five decades of teaching took precedence over his health. He said, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
I responded, “Shouldn’t you?”
He smiled and told me to sit down, and we talked until daytime visiting hours ended. Mr. Mikkelsen was a baseball fan, and he was curious to see what I’d come up with. I told him about watching Ken Burns and researching the Negro Leagues and how I’d developed a theory that baseball is economically conservative but socially progressive and one how begets the other. As I was ushered out of the room by a nurse, Mr. Mikkelsen told me he looked forward to reading the paper.
I was the first student to visit Mr. Mikkelsen, but I was not the last. As I returned over the next few weeks, the room was always filled with the last five decades of lives that Mr. Mikkelsen had changed. Whatever happened with his pancreas, Mr. Mikkelsen would be living on in a way only the best people do.
I never got another private moment with Mr. Mikkelsen after that first day. And he never read my paper. Mr. Mikkelsen passed away just after the new year.
Hunter held a memorial service for Mr. Mikkelsen, and our class was told that the school wanted one of us to speak about him. I volunteered immediately. I didn’t think about how nervous I might be in front of my classmates or what the bullies would say if I messed up. I just knew that if I didn’t volunteer, I would regret it.
The auditorium was absolutely packed for the memorial. While I’d spoken publicly in USY, this was bigger than any crowd I’d seen before, and it was a crowd of people who I knew did not respect me. But the importance of what I needed to do outweighed my nerves, and I just started speaking.
The former students that spoke before me painted beautiful tributes of how, no matter how tough Mr. Mikkelsen was as a teacher, he was fair. About how Mr. Mikkelsen’s students achieved great things because of how hard he pushed them. About how students learned more than numbers and dates in his classes—they learned why.
When it was my turn, I went in a different direction. I wanted to share what I loved about Mr. Mikkelsen. I wanted everyone to remember how funny he was.
So, instead of telling stories of what he meant to me, I just started quoting him.
“There’s an equine paradox,” I said. “There are more horse’s asses than horses.”
“In the Soviet Union, everyone is guaranteed the freedom of speech . . . Once.”
These were sayings that we all knew, since Mr. Mikkelsen tended to repeat his best material. As the audience laughed, I thought of his smile that first afternoon in the hospital. I smiled, too.
Mr. Bates went from substitute to permanent and graded all our papers. Before he returned them, he announced that there were three A-plusses in the class. Before each one, he spoke about how great the paper was instead of just calling the student’s name. Two of them were handed out before Mr. Bates called my name and said a sentence I will never forget.
“Steve Hofstetter,” Mr. Bates said. “Let me tell you a little something about Steve Hofstetter.”
Mr. Bates went on to say that he’d read my paper multiple times and even shared it with his wife. Mr. Bates said it was the best written paper he’d ever read as a teacher, that it was clear I took the subject seriously, and that he would be surprised if I didn’t end up as a professional writer.
I was beaming with pride. In just a few months, I’d transformed from one of the worst students in the class to a student who a teacher was praising in front of everyone. My beam was cut short when Mr. Bates handed me the paper. He’d given me a B-plus.
Mr. Bates felt that, as well-written as the paper was, it could have been more in-depth when it came to my theory that baseball’s fiscal conservatism begat its social progressivism. After all of Mr. Bates’s bluster about my writing, I had gotten only a B-plus.
That’s okay. I’d make sure that my class participation grade would make up for that. Figures don’t lie.
BOWLING FOR DATES
I didn’t give up on girls after things with Elaine hadn’t worked out the way I’d planned. I pined after a few others without them knowing. I didn’t get any better at attracting women (or even speaking to them), but I was an all-star at hiding my feelings.
I no longer worried about women putting me in t
he friend zone, because I put myself there before they had a chance to. I could give a tour of the friend zone.
“Hey, welcome to the friend zone. Over there you can see my bed. It’s used solely for sleeping.”
My vast experience with platonic relationships is what made hitting it off with Hope Womack so surprising.
I met Hope at a USY leadership weekend. The weekend was smaller than a regular Kinnus—just a few people per chapter, so there were only about thirty of us there. The odds I’d meet someone single whom I was attracted to and who was attracted to me were extremely low. As it turns out, those odds were one in thirty.
The odds were almost two in thirty—Hope was there with her identical twin sister, Amy. All the guys knew pretty quickly not to waste our time hitting on Amy. She was a nice girl, and just as cute as Hope (actually, exactly as cute as Hope), but Amy had a boyfriend. Amy didn’t just have a boyfriend—Amy had a boyfriend in every conversation.
“I’m sorry my throat is a bit scratchy. I’ve been fighting a cold,” one of us might say. Amy would immediately fire back with, “my boyfriend had a cold once.” We learned not to hypothetically ask if he was okay, because that would just lead to Amy saying, “my boyfriend is okay. I have a boyfriend. Have you heard I have a boyfriend?”
I didn’t really care that Amy had a boyfriend, since I didn’t think she’d be interested in me anyway. I wasn’t the kind of guy that girls were interested in. Amy’s boyfriend was probably big and muscly and strong, though he may have been weakened by that terrible cold.
I was coincidentally seated near Hope at dinner Friday night, and I made her laugh a few times. When someone asked why Hope had such a unique name, I answered and said, “it’s obvious. She was named for the Hope Diamond.” When they inquired why one twin was named something unique like Hope and one named something more familiar like Amy, I said, “the Amy Diamond.” When you’re not trying to impress anyone, it’s a lot easier to be funny.
Saturday afternoon, Hope chose the chair next to me for lunch. Well, Hope chose a chair next to Amy, who was already sitting two seats away from me. But Hope could have sat on Amy’s other side, and she didn’t.
There were empty seats on both sides of Amy, possibly because she was saving them both for her boyfriend. Have you heard that Amy had a boyfriend?
Hope chose to sit next to me, or at least on the side of Amy that was next to me. Maybe her choice of seating had nothing to do with me. Maybe she wanted to be farther from the window or closer to the coleslaw. I was very preoccupied with the seating arrangements of girls I found attractive.
Whatever her motivation, Hope and I sat next to each other and talked through most of lunch. We talked about the differences between Queens and Brooklyn, how you can never be too old to enjoy cartoons, and how we first joined USY because our families forced it on us but now we really enjoyed it. Amy talked about her boyfriend.
By Saturday night, Hope and I had established a rapport. I’d done that with many girls over the years, but this was different. This may not have been platonic. Hope seemed to be as excited to talk to me as I was to talk to her. Was I out of the friend zone? I’d have to update the tour.
“Hey, welcome to the non–friend zone. Over there you can see my bed. It’s used solely for sitting on the edge of awkwardly, three feet apart while I obsess over the correct place to keep my hands.”
Saturday night’s activity was bowling, which played to my strengths. I was not a good bowler, but I was a fiercely self-deprecating bowler. You know who else isn’t a good bowler? Most people who are bowling with their youth group. We all sucked, but at least I was going to be funny about it.
The bowling alley was about a mile away, so we all walked. Knowing I needed to find a way to be on Hope’s lane at the bowling alley, I asked my friend Abe if he wanted to partner up, and then asked Amy and Hope if they wanted to join us. They agreed, and the four of us spent the whole walk talking. It was perfect—Abe had a girlfriend and Amy had a boyfriend, so they could platonically discuss their love for other people while I bonded with Hope.
Nope.
Abe was more of a friendly acquaintance than a friend, so I didn’t know that he and his girlfriend had broken up a few weeks earlier. Amy and her boyfriend were still going strong.
I miscalculated. I did secure a situation where Hope and I would be hanging out all night. But we’d also be hanging out with another single guy who was rebounding and already knew enough about girls to have been in a real relationship.
Amy’s boyfriend was also in a real relationship.
On the walk to the bowling alley and throughout the evening, Hope talked to both Abe and I equally. I did everything I could—I bowled terribly and was funny about it just like I’d planned—but there was no shaking Hope’s interest in Abe. Abe was a year older than I, which instantly made him a year more attractive. He also had more interesting things to talk about, like heartbreak and loss. I’d had plenty of heartbreak but not much loss. Unless you counted the New York Mets.
By the time we had to head out, I’d given up. I let Abe and Hope talk as I walked a bit ahead of them, trapped in a conversation with Amy about how great her boyfriend was.
“You know who loves to bowl?” Amy asked.
Suddenly, Hope ran to catch up with us and grabbed Amy away from me to speak with her privately. I continued walking alone in a group of thirty people.
After a few minutes passed, Hope came up next to me, and Amy was back behind us talking to Abe. It wasn’t until years later that I understood why they’d swapped. While Abe was full-court pressing Hope, I looked like I was confidently walking ahead. Abe reeked of rebound desperation. By giving up, I was back to the version of me that attracted Hope in the first place—the guy who wasn’t trying too hard.
Hope and I had a wonderful walk, and we kept talking for the remainder of the weekend. We found an empty room to talk in, hoping to stay until the chaperones caught us and told us to go to sleep. Except the chaperones never caught us. The thing about being a good kid who always obeys the rules is that when you occasionally break one, everyone assumes you have a good reason.
A few hours in to us sharing every story we each had, long after everyone else was asleep, there was a pause. I hadn’t even noticed, but Hope and I had been slowly moving closer to one another. By the time we paused, we were arm in arm, with her leaning against me. It was then that Hope kissed me.
I have often wondered how kissing became a fairly universally accepted sign of affection. Before the Internet and TV and talking pictures. Before books and newspapers and maybe even cave paintings. People from all around the world just knew that if you wanted to show someone affection, you opened and closed your mouth on theirs many times in a row like a guppy.
That night showed me how that could have happened. While Hope and I both knew what kissing was, the natural pull to make it happen was something I couldn’t explain. Probably because I was too busy making out with Hope to explain anything. When Alexa kissed me, I was excited because I’d never kissed anyone before. But when Hope kissed me, it just made sense. We finally went to sleep around four A.M., regretting that neither of us had packed Chap Stick.
That is how I got my first real girlfriend.
Over the next six weeks, Hope and I made out a lot. We also made our parents drive us to each other’s houses. That was particularly important because Hope lived at the far edge of Brooklyn and I was in the middle of Queens. If it weren’t for our parents, we’d have only seen each other at USY events.
Sometimes I’d stay over at Hope’s house, in a separate room of course. We’d sneak out of our rooms in the middle of the night and make out for a few hours before sneaking back in. I don’t know whether her parents knew what we were doing and didn’t say anything or whether they were fast asleep because they were tired from all the driving.
When Hope and I couldn’t see each other, we tried phone sex. Phone sex was hilariously difficult since we both had big families. Whoe
ver’s family isn’t home does all the talking, and the other one says “mmmhmmm” in as sexy a way as possible. It was even more difficult because neither one of us had ever done anything more than kiss someone. The rest we were just making up.
Not only had I never had actual sex, but I didn’t even have premium cable. My knowledge of sex was based on movies edited for network TV, where you couldn’t say dirty words, let alone show what to do with them. I am glad I don’t remember exactly what I said to Hope on those calls because I am sure I’d be mortified at my ignorance.
My friends made a lot of jokes about Hope’s name (their favorite go-to was asking me if I’d seen her hope chest), but I didn’t mind. I had a girlfriend—a real girlfriend—and I was in love. Well, I thought I was.
My logic when I decided to tell Hope I loved her was flawless. I didn’t want to break up with her, which meant I wanted to stay with her, which meant I wanted to stay with her forever. And who wants to stay with someone forever if they’re not in love? Flawless, huh?
Really, I was just enjoying myself. It felt wonderful to have someone care for me. And when the teasing got bad in school, it didn’t matter as much because I had a teammate somewhere. I went to see Hope’s plays and got her an awesome birthday present and called her every night.
Dating Hope was much more advanced than dating Alexa and not-dating Lindsay. We were having phone sex and using the word love and kissing better than vacuum cleaners. On our sixth-month anniversary (you know, the diamond anniversary), I even got us a hotel room.
Record scratch.
Yes, a hotel room. To this day, it is one of the riskiest, boldest, and dumbest things I have ever done. I took every dollar I had earned from babysitting that I hadn’t already spent on presents for Hope and convinced my brother to reserve a room for us at an airport Best Western. We had an elaborate story cooked up—he’d reserve the room since he was nineteen and had a credit card. Then I would show up as his little brother, explaining how his flight was delayed but I was exhausted and if they could just let me in without him that’d be great. My brother went along with it because he also had a girlfriend and lived at home, so he understood my pain. And because I was paying him $20.
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