A tenacious schoolboy from Australia will have a great story to tell his grandkids one day and it will go something like this:
Once upon a time… I needed a date for the school dance. I didn’t fancy anyone at school so I decided to shoot for the stars and ask my true dream date, a former Miss Universe, if she would be available. My prayers were answered when she accepted and I counted the days until I could enter the dance hall arm-and-arm with the best looking gal on the planet.
Okay, okay… enough of my embellishing. Here are the real facts:
Seventeen-year-old Daniel Dibley needed a date for the school dance in the Australian country town of Bathurst, west of Sydney. But rather than ask one of his school chums he decided to aim high and ask Australia’s best-known beauty queen, Jennifer Hawkins (Miss Universe 2004) if she would accompany him to the dance. According to a local newspaper, Hawkins stunned Dibley and the entire school by accepting. But, then, in a move that would break the schoolboy’s heart, Hawkins bowed out of the date because of what she told reporters was the “overwhelming publicity” surrounding the event. Hawkins said she didn’t mean to lead Dibley on, rather she said she didn’t want to “overshadow plans for the end-of-year dance,” which is for students in their final year of high school.
But, lest you think that all beauty queens are cold-hearted teases, this story does have a happy ending. The newspaper reports that Hawkins showed up to Dibley’s Bathurst High School on Tuesday for a private lunch date with Daniel, and to speak to the school assembly, where she apologized for all the fuss.
“I didn’t want you guys to think I didn’t want to come to Bathurst, or I didn’t want come to the formal (dance),” Hawkins told the school assembly. “I did. It just became too big. I just wanted a low-key thing.”
Awww… and they all lived happily ever after. (Though, no word on whether Dibley ever got the dance with Hawkins he so desired.)