I can’t remember Prom

So prom is supposed to be some sort of thing teenagers build up to all year, all their lives? A night you'll never forget.
Puleeze. Ask me who the King and Queen were? Ask me what the theme was?


I don't remember much of prom, or maybe it’s just that they all ran together. I remember where I went to prom my Sophomore year, but I don't remember post-prom. The prom itself was uncomfortable and my date was superfluous. The dress was, one of those things you have to explain the rest of your “hard core” career as “totally not me” but at the time a lucky find at a garage sale and my mom approved of it. I still have the picture. Sweet faced with my curled hair the only thing on my shoulders. The absence of a chest hidden by the absent waist and hips, and the lace flounce where my breasts should have been. I had nothing to hold that dress up. And yes, it was pink. Now you know my dark dirty secrete. Shut up! I was young and I was pretty.
The only reason I got to go was because I got my sister a date. I did that so I could go out till I was 17.
I remember My Junior prom, photo all of us together the PFC’s (and we were Pretty Fucken Cool). All 4 of us girls in one picture. We were going to go stag. One by one that fell along the wayside. My mom wouldn’t let me go with my group of girlfriend: “That is totally inappropriate” and some other choice words. I remember asking a guy, to whom I sold a suit, to go just so I could go with my friends. “Well I know you have a suit…what are you doing next Saturday?” It was theme! We had WWII (hat, long gloves, even her date came in his Army uniform) we had European WWI (all floral and scarved), a 1980's prom queen in apricot with dyed matching shoes and big hair (it was not the 80's), and I went as either a Cavalier lady or a Civil war southern bell in mourning (black satin and velvet, hoop skirt). Man did I look severe in that picture. Never had to explain that one. I seriously looked like I'd chop your head off.

Afterwards a group of 10 ended up at the gravel pit (pit full of water proper for small town swimming) being wild and crazy. My date ended up with the foreign exchange student (WWI) by the end of the night. I was only too glad to provide him for her. I think we had breakfast at a friend’s house in the morning. Southern mom serving all this food up for piles of teens lolling on the floor in various stages of D-tox. Er, no. Maybe that was the morning after the other prom. Who knows? I don't.

I remember Senior prom. I remember the homemade dress I designed, the college date, and running onto the dance floor to be lifted above the heads of my schoolmates, briefly poised with familiar hands around my waist supporting me like a ballerina and thinking that I didn’t know half the people looking up at me. I remember the post prom. It consisted of 2 couples, an empty house, and culminated in a friends frightening moment where a feminine hygiene product that had been there, wasnt anymore.

The things I remember are like pictures. Snapshots or a moment. It's not the event itself that is the big deal.
It's just another reason to get together with your friends. It's a license to have a date. It is not this culmination of a lifetime to spend gobs of money on.