Senior Prom Part I -

Prom Night

Is it prom season again? I was at the mall and I’m hardly ever at the mall, so I wasn’t sure if all the formal dresses were because of prom, or if it’s some new fashion thing that I am unaware of. So many of them looked like they belonged in Strictly Ballroom, it was hard to picture them on anyone who wasn’t doing the Flamenco.

Is this not a Strictly Prom dress?

Prom dresses in 1989 were not so different, really. If there was one huge difference, it was the amount of lace that was on most dresses in 1989. Lots of lace that year - big hair and lace.

All those fancy dresses got me thinking about my own senior prom, which I did not attend. As I was writing this story, I remembered something that happened at the end of that night which I had completely forgotten about. It was like I blanked it out of my memory on purpose. Which makes sense, because it was awful. Probably one of the more terrible things I've purposely done. 

But to begin with, even though I wasn’t a huge fan of the idea of going to the prom, I drew a picture of the prom dress I wanted. If I had gone, I wanted to make my own dress, not buy one off the rack. I didn’t want a dress that looked like everyone else’s.  As it turned out, no one asked me to go to the prom, so I guess I wore my feelings on my big, poufy sleeve. There was a person that I had hoped would ask me, PJ. Oh PJ. He was in band. He played the trumpet.  I’m not even sure why I decided that I wanted to go to the prom with PJ, but once I made my mind up, there was no changing it. I waited until I thought that it was getting to be a close call and then one day after school, at a friend’s house, I called him and asked him to go with me. It was terrifying! And he declined, saying that he had already asked someone else to go. It was sort of kind to say that he had already asked someone else, but then again, it’s never really fun to get turned down. Hopes dashed! So I pretty much decided to boycott the prom. My two best friends were dating each other and planned to go. I did NOT want to be a third wheel at the prom, of all things. And I don’t think that they asked me to go, anyway. That would just have been awkward.  I made up my mind that I could not be bothered to go to the senior prom.

I was absolutely terrified of anything strapless

 It was maybe a week before the prom when I was talking with a guy who sat in front of me in my Global Studies class, Jay. He and I were in band together. We were chatting and I asked him if he was going to go to the prom. He said no, he had not planned on it. I said, me either. But then I impulsively said, “You have a tux for orchestra, don’t you? We could totally go to the prom together!”.  He just shook his head and said, no, no prom. I agreed. It was really too late to make those sort of plans anyway. And I didn’t want to go to the prom. I told him that we should make other non-prom plans. I said, we should go Rock and Roll Bowling! It will be fun and we can invite anyone we want to go with us, people who were not going to the prom, obviously.  Jay told me that he was serving food at a dinner at his church that night. I said, I’ll come help, rock and roll bowling doesn’t start until 10pm, anyway! We agreed.

So prom night – I showed up at Jay’s church. I’m not even sure what the dinner was for, but I was helping out in the kitchen, washing up dishes and getting big dishes of food ready to serve to large tables of people. No one there knew who I was. I’m pretty sure that I was probably in the way. And I had decided at the last minute to wear Lee Press-on Nails. Which, if anyone remembers, were like, the worst, fake nails ever made. They looked ridiculous and I had painted them bright red. I think I dressed up a little too, and looked completely out of place in the kitchen, but I jumped right in and put on an apron and a pair of gloves and got to work.

We were meeting a couple of other people to go to the bowling alley with. It was in Portland, which was about 40 minutes away. I think there were four or five of us in our little party. Rock and Roll Bowling: when they turned the lights down on the lanes and played “classic rock”. It was still a lark in 1989, and it got crowded quickly. We hadn’t been there for very long when a group of guys turned up in the lane next to us. And I knew one of them! Kerry! From my Greek Drama class the year before! He had graduated the year before and was going to a local city university. I liked Kerry. He had let me wear his Guess watch for two weeks once. I thought maybe he would ask me out or something, but when he took the watch back, it was very matter of fact and he was simply friendly. And now that I think about it, a little weird. Kerry was with a group of guys and they were all drinking beer. He thought it was great that we were bowling instead of at the prom – he totally got that we were dissing the prom and bowling instead. We didn’t need any stinking prom! He asked if any of us wanted a beer, but the crowd I was with was pretty straight, so we just bowled. He and his friends got drunker and drunker and eventually left. I never saw Kerry again, but I did hear that he got arrested at work at the local grocery store for stealing a couple of years later.   

Halloween costume or Prom dress?

Remember the horrid fake nails I was wearing? It tuned out that Lee Press-On Nails were not designed to hold up to a bowling ball. I threw the ball one time and one of my nails came off in the finger hole of the ball! I was just glad that it didn’t fall out in the bowling lane. I tried to take them off without anyone noticing, but I’m pretty sure Jay caught me and I managed to laugh it off.

After bowling, we were meeting up with friends who had chosen to attend the prom. My two best friends had agreed to meet up with me and some other friends of ours that were all going as couples. One friend, Cindy, had gone to the prom with someone who she wasn’t actually dating, they just went together to have someone to go with. She bought a crazy yellow dress and had my mom do her hair. She looked really great. The guy she was going with was Cecil. When she told me she was going with Cecil, I was shocked. He was a well-established bully! He said horrible things to me and several other people I knew. She insisted that he had changed and that they were going to have a lovely prom night. When Jay and I and our other non-prom people showed up at the house where everyone was meeting, she was there to tell her tale of woe. She told us that she had had a horrible night. Cecil was a complete jerk. He hadn’t bought her a corsage. He took her to McDonalds for dinner and thought it was funny. He didn’t dance with her. He didn’t really act like they were on a date at all. She was so disappointed! I thought, I told you not to trust that guy. He was nothing but trouble. I felt so smug for deciding not to go to the prom with someone just to go (even though I would have changed my mind at the last minute if Jay had agreed to go with me - ah, 17 years old!) ! It made my night bowling next to Jerry and his drunken college friends even better!  Not even my bad nail incident seemed that bad after hearing her story.

I can't lie, I would wear this to Ben and Jerry's on a Monday.

To be continued. Stay tuned for Part Deux, where you learn how I tried to debauch the straight kids, and other nasty things about my past.