Wednesday, April 18, 2012

RTW: Prom: Shockingly, not the Most Important Night Of My Life

Don't miss my SHATTER ME giveaway--running now till April 29th!

I've been sitting out RTW lately, but today's topic is just too much fun to miss. 



YA Highway!




This Week's Topic:
It's almost prom season, and since we love to read and write about teenagers, we want to hear your prom stories!


 Junior Prom:
Source (Colin_K on Flickr)

  • I bought a dress. It was blue and pretty and I loved it. 
  • Then a friend and I decided that, since we didn't have dates and going stag sounded like no fun, we would skip out and do something awesome, like go horseback riding or get dressed up and go to the movies. 
  • I returned the dress. 
  •  Then my friend bought tickets at the last minute and went to prom with her (female) cousin from out of town. 
  • I think I went to the movies with my mom instead. 

 Senior Prom:

This is the only digital shot I could find of myself from senior year. (Source) Sorry, kiddos: we took my prom photos with FILM.  You're too young.  Ask your parents to tell you about it.

  • The date drama was ca-razy, with my close friend weighing asks from three different boys and me having no dates and no prospects as all the guys I knew had asked her instead.
  •  Meanwhile, in the play we were both working on, the stage manager abruptly moved to another district and a freshman boy stepped up in the crisis and took her place. Impressed and freed from social convention by my desperation, I asked him to go with me. Sure, I was like a foot taller than him. But he was absolutely drama-free and adorable (in the way that 14-year-old boys are to 17-year-old girls: basically, he was an infant in a tuxedo). 
  • I bought a dress. It was black this time.  It made me feel old.  (When you're 17 that's still a good thing.) 
  • A few of us decided that limos were too expensive, so we convinced our sophomore-with-a-license friend to drive us there and enlisted my older cousin to drive us back.  She, being my cool older cousin, brought a bottle of wine for me to sneak in to the after-prom party at my friend's house.  I, being the most unbelievably straight-edge nerd in the history of time a good law-abiding kid, refused to take it.  (My friends were a tad miffed.)  When I turned 21 my mother gave me the bottle--my cousin had given it to her and told her the whole story that night.  I imagine I scored major Mom points that night.
  • Prom itself:  pretty un-memorable, except that my date was so happy to be there and so un-self-conscious that he actually hit the dance floor with me while my friends' dates glowered and skulked at the table to avoid rhythmic movement of any kind. 
  • The after-prom party and subsequent camping trip were a lot more fun and memorable than prom itself.  A big group of us crashed at my friend's house--she had a sort of rec room in her family's garage, which was good for supervised-but-not-too-supervised get-togethers.  I don't think there was drinking, or if there was it was really minimal, and mostly we just stayed up being goofy and punchy till we crashed.  The next day some of us drove out to a campsite and wandered around in the rain all day, being goofy and punchy some more.  The rest of the crew camped out overnight but I had to get picked up because I had a youth group thing the next morning.  It's mostly notable for the fact that I'm pretty sure it was the most soaking, dripping wet any of us had ever been, because we we in a field, in the pouring rain, for an entire day.
In a nutshell?

Junior Prom: Duped
Senior Prom: Drenched

(Sounds like series titles, no?)

12 comments:

  1. The junior prom thing sucked, but senior prom sounded lovely. I'm glad your date danced with you, mine danced with me, too :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Seriously, it made prom fun instead of awkward and dull. We did a mean Cha Cha Slide, let me tell you.

      Delete
  2. *sigh*... remember film cameras? :)

    That was a really sucky thing your friends did for Junior Prom (kids can be cruel). I'm glad you had a better time at Senior Prom, though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Honestly? Yes, sometimes kids are cruel, but much more often they're just completely oblivious to the effect they have on anyone else. (Perspective gained as a teacher--at the time, it still felt pretty awful.) But I really don't think this girl meant to upset me...she was just looking out for her own self. (But I wish I had gotten to wear that dress!)

      Delete
  3. Oh, yes, all my high school pictures were taken with *film. I think you're on to something with those titles, too!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's amazing to me how much of the technology I grew up with is totally off my students' radar--I'm only ten years older than many of my students, but it's a whole different universe!

      Delete
  4. Those titles are pretty cool :D
    It sucks you didn't get to wear your junior prom dress but it sounds you senior prom was quite fun! (and way to go for asking that 14-year-old guy!)
    Oh and I totally laughed at this: "It made me feel old. (When you're 17 that's still a good thing.)" So. Right.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He was seriously the best date ever because he spent the whole evening in a fog of feeling like the world's luckiest guy, which made him super-agreeable, and since I was So. Much. Older. there was no weird prom night romantic tension to worry about either.

      Delete
  5. I really envy those people who are born not worrying what other people think of them and are the first to hop on the dance floor. It takes most of us decades to learn that lesson.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've always been highly motivated by things that are supposed to be Big Life Events--so my thinking was, this is my only prom, I *will* enjoy myself! It overcame any shyness I might have felt. (The same impulse was very helpful on my wedding day, when at least fifty people told me I was the most relaxed bride they'd ever seen. I had to choose between stressing over details and enjoying the day--a no brainer!)

      Delete
  6. I've never been to a prom in my entire life. I don't even remember if we had prom where I lived (might be a Canadian thing?). We had dances, but I never attended any of those. The only dance I remember going to was my grade 8 grad dance, and I'm surprised that my parents even let me go to that one (super strict Baptists). Sounds like you had a lot of fun at your senior prom, though. Especially on that camping trip :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Actually, you just made me remember another detail of that trip. One of our friends (a guy I had asked out but been very sweetly rejected by) helped out in his family business: a pizzeria. So as we all stumbled out of our cars into the downpour, and tried to get our tents pitched, he amazed us all by procuring a giant paper bag full of--what else--still warm crusty Italian rolls. It seemed magical at the time, and may explain why I have such a thing for The Boy With the Bread--because I had my own!

      Delete

Thanks for coming by! Please chime in!