A Publicly Transitory Misadventure with Sadie Hawkins: Part 1

Looking at them from the side, the numbers on the front of the bus looked like '206.' It wasn't until I was halfway to Gunbarrel that I figured out I was actually on the 205. Who knew subtracting 1 from the name of a bus could make such a big difference?

On the forty minute ride to the Gunbarrel shopping center and back, I had plenty of time to listen to the two high schoolers conversing awkwardly behind me. It went like this:

Boy: So you're a freshman?
Girl: Yeah.
Boy: Is everyone else mean to you?
Girl: Not really.
Boy: I'm always a total dick to the freshmen at my school.
Girl: (Tries to laugh.)
Boy: Does your school have a Sadie Hawkins dance?
Girl: No.
Boy: It's where the girls ask the boys to the dance. (Turns pink around the edges.)

At this point my mind wandered off, and I lost track of the conversation. Who was Sadie Hawkins? I wondered. Was she just a brazen hussy who foolishly asked a boy to a dance, unaware that her infamy would live on for more than fifty years after that unthinkable act was committed, or was she a shrewdly intelligent and vain seductress who, in a Hari Seldonesque display of prognostication, birthed a wicked scheme to get a dance named after her and have high schoolers mentioning her name long after she was too wrinkly and senilely tactless to attract an adequate dance partner? Or did she just not know that the boys are supposed to ask the girls?