efore Tim Shaeffer dared ask Corinne Welker to the prom, he first inquired delicately as to how she was likely to respond. She told him, “It kind of depends on how you ask me.”
So Shaeffer, 17, and a classmate took a roll of red duct tape to the Bay Ridge community marina and taped his question — “Prom?” — to the sail of the family’s 30-foot boat. Then, in a triumph of coordination and timing, he arranged to have his parents motor past the sea wall and unfurl the sail as he and Welker sat in a parked car, admiring the Bay Ridge view.
He got the answer he wanted.
“I took it seriously and went all-out,” said Shaeffer, a senior at Annapolis High School. “For one thing, I really like her. And . . . I wanted it to be so none of her girlfriends could one-up her. It’s getting to where pretty much everybody is going to big lengths to ask people to prom.”