# High School Proms. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 28, 2006, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239 "2006-10-28T15:56:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mittu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@mittu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mittu)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/41 "2006-10-29T15:53:22Z")
Do you have the “signing of shirts” tradition in American that we have in the U.K.? The tradition is that on the last day of mandatory school all the kids sign each other’s white shirts (if the school has a uniform that is) with messages of good luck or, more often than not, obscenities and sexual doodles. ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/42 "2006-10-29T15:58:56Z")
[QUOTE=mittu] Pantomimes are pretty simple really, you see it gets pretty cold around Christmas in the U.K. so we organise these events so that down on their luck z-list celebrities have somewhere warm to stay, it’s so cute to see their little faces light up as we pretend to laugh at the same jokes they have been telling for 25 years. [/QUOTE] In a nutshell my friend, in a nutshell 😃 ---
**Author:** ![hawksgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ed655f/32.png) [@hawksgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawksgirl)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/43 "2006-10-29T16:08:14Z")
[QUOTE=mittu] Do you have the “signing of shirts” tradition in American that we have in the U.K.? The tradition is that on the last day of mandatory school all the kids sign each other’s white shirts (if the school has a uniform that is) with messages of good luck or, more often than not, obscenities and sexual doodles. [/QUOTE] Nope, we do that in our Yearbooks, not our shirts. Most schools here don’t have uniforms anyway. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/44 "2006-10-29T16:12:33Z")
[QUOTE=Tripler] Bitter? Nope. Just realistic. [/QUOTE] Well, at least it didn’t scar you for life or anything. If you don’t go to prom, it does kind of make you a “loser”. Not because prom is so cool or such a good time or anything. But these are people you have gone to school with for 3-4 years. Surely there must be a few of them you wouldn’t mind hanging out with. And deciding to hang out with your clique of 3-4 misanthropes in lieu of prom is kind of lame. You guys can play cards together any night. Go be miserable with everyone else at prom. It’s not like you’ll ever have a chance to do it later on. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/45 "2006-10-29T16:21:18Z")
[QUOTE=Walloon] He was your date? [/QUOTE] I wish! Hell, if I had my way, **I’d** be the buccaneer, and be pillaging across the dance floor and tables. Hells yes! I’d even cut in at the buffet line. Tripler Yes, we had a buffet line. How lame. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/46 "2006-10-29T16:27:50Z")
[QUOTE=msmith537] If you don’t go to prom, it does kind of make you a “loser”. Not because prom is so cool or such a good time or anything. But these are people you have gone to school with for 3-4 years. Surely there must be a few of them you wouldn’t mind hanging out with. And deciding to hang out with your clique of 3-4 misanthropes in lieu of prom is kind of lame. You guys can play cards together any night. Go be miserable with everyone else at prom. It’s not like you’ll ever have a chance to do it later on. [/QUOTE] Of the 165-or-so people I graduated with, I would _actively choose_ to associate with four or five of those people. Like I mentioned earlier, I was stuck in a class of snobs, Wall Street types, and those that had their collegiate time already funded by the First National Bank of Mommy & Daddy. I just wanted to head to a flight school in Arizona. And damned if I didn’t and work my way through everything else. . . Honestly, if I had to do it over again, I would have foregone the proms and saved the gas money for my first truck. The prom is what you make of it, and unfortunately, of what the rest of ‘the crowd’ thinks it is. So if you ain’t “cool”, yer on yer own . . . which is what I wish I realized earlier in the game. Tripler I thank God I’m not their kind of loser. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/47 "2006-10-29T16:31:06Z")
[QUOTE=msmith537] Well, at least it didn’t scar you for life or anything. If you don’t go to prom, it does kind of make you a “loser”. Not because prom is so cool or such a good time or anything. But these are people you have gone to school with for 3-4 years. [/QUOTE] . . . and I must submit to you: You assume I’m still living in the same town as these pukes. I couldn’t care less–I moved two time zones away, and haven’t lived in the same town since (nigh on 11 years ago). Tripler I’ve traveled more countries than most of those people could spell letters in an alphabet. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/48 "2006-10-29T16:55:37Z")
[QUOTE=msmith537] If you don’t go to prom, it does kind of make you a “loser”. Not because prom is so cool or such a good time or anything. But these are people you have gone to school with for 3-4 years. Surely there must be a few of them you wouldn’t mind hanging out with. And deciding to hang out with your clique of 3-4 misanthropes in lieu of prom is kind of lame. You guys can play cards together any night. Go be miserable with everyone else at prom. It’s not like you’ll ever have a chance to do it later on. [/QUOTE] My High School graduating class had around 700 people in it. I didn’t even know 80% of them. We had two armed guards on patrol during school hours because of all of the gangsters. I don’t know how many of my graduating class ended up in prison but it was more than a trivial number. You really do have to accept that people come from different backgrounds and have different experiences. People did use the argument with me that I should go because it would be my only prom and I would regret it if I missed out. They were incorrect in my case. Actually, most of my good friends did go. I can’t remember what I did that night. I probably worked my shift at the pizza place but I may have just watched TV at home. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/49 "2006-10-29T17:19:48Z")
[QUOTE=Lynn BodoniIn some areas, the kids rent a hotel room for after-prom activities, and these activities generally consist of a lot of drinking and sex, sometimes drugs as well. Parents sometimes are clueless, and sometimes will wink at these activities, figuring it’s better to have drunken teens in a hotel room rather than running around while drunk.[/QUOTE] My school’s “prom” inculded a compulsory “after-prom” designed to keep us from doing anything we shouldn’t. They rented a bowling alley (rented it so that none of us kids would be traumatized by seeing anyone drinking beer) and held us there until 2 AM, after which, they apparently assumed we’d be too tired to get into mischief. As one of my friends said in his best Bugs Bunny voice: “She don’t know us too well, do she?” ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/50 "2006-10-29T17:52:13Z")
Am I to gather, by some of the responses, that you clean cut all American guys and gals _actually_ engaged in pre-marital sex after these Proms. I’m shocked I tell you, shocked. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/51 "2006-10-29T17:58:59Z")
Folks mention the “After Prom” thing, my school had something similar, but it was on a seperate night, and vaguely called “Project Graduation”. I found out about it only because my mom mentioned it to me because she was volunteering to chaperone with the PTA (I was never much in communication with the rest of my class during High Schol, moving twice during that time in my life). Basically, they rented out a nearby skating rink (the Stars Center in Duncanville, one of numerous such Stars Centers around DFW I think) and had ice skating, video games, sumo wrestling (I nearly gave myself a concussion going up against an athletic guy twice my size that I knew from JROTC), various door prizes (got my first DVD there, “Three Fugitives”, a month and a half before our household included anything capable of playing DVDs), and lots of suprisingly good food (potluck food, I think, my favorite were the beef flautas). Oh, a sidenote on graduation, the whole Story You Will Not Hear Without Buying Me A Bottle Of Bourbon aside, there was a girl from my church I wanted to ask, but decided not to because her school’s prom was the same night as mine. I only found out later that SHE didn’t have a date to HER prom either (so she went with a couple of friends). Le Sigh. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/52 "2006-10-29T18:21:51Z")
**Tripler** , I think you meant you went to the florist to pick up your _[boutonniere](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boutonniere)_, not your _buccaneer_. ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/53 "2006-10-29T19:04:09Z")
[QUOTE=Walloon] **Tripler** , I think you meant you went to the florist to pick up your _[boutonniere](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boutonniere)_, not your _buccaneer_. [/QUOTE] Look here, if he’s into pirates that’s his business, OK? “Aarrggh me lads” ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/54 "2006-10-29T19:19:25Z")
[QUOTE=chowder] Look here, if he’s into pirates that’s his business, OK? “Aarrggh me lads” [/QUOTE] I’m just having fun picturing a pirate working in a flower shop. Is this related to Capital One putting the Viking Hordes out of jobs too? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/55 "2006-10-29T19:28:35Z")
[QUOTE=msmith537] But if you are the type of person who wasn’t really socially connected with your class or you don’t have any close friends, prom is not going to magically change all that. It will still be you and a bunch of people you have a nodding acquaintance with not really connecting just like any other day. [/QUOTE] I had plenty of friends in high school. I don’t know of a single one who even paid attention to the prom. We were too busy doing the things we wanted to do. There are reasons one might not go to the prom other than being some sort of social misfit. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/56 "2006-10-29T19:35:56Z")
[QUOTE=Walloon] **Tripler** , I think you meant you went to the florist to pick up your _[boutonniere](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boutonniere)_, not your _buccaneer_. [/QUOTE] Yes, you’re right. But as par for the course, I always bucked the system by calling whatever the hell I wanted (because that’s what I thought I heard the first time someone told me about it)–and people knew what I meant. So avast ye sharks! If I wanna wears me a flowered thing on me vest, then heave to ya scallawags! Tripler Arr! And I went straight to Davy Jones’ Florist shop too! ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/57 "2006-10-29T23:09:06Z")
[QUOTE=Jeff Lichtman] I had plenty of friends in high school. I don’t know of a single one who even paid attention to the prom. We were too busy doing the things we wanted to do. There are reasons one might not go to the prom other than being some sort of social misfit. [/QUOTE] Same here - in fact, that was the main problem I had in getting a date for prom. I’d had a couple of steady boyfriends in high school (sequentially, not simultaneously), but when Prom time came around, I was single. The first guy I asked, a nice Romanian classmate of mine who had been in the U.S. for only a few months, initially said yes (followed by, “ummm, what’s prom?”) but then bailed on me a couple of weeks before when it became apparent that the boys’ volleyball team, of which he was a member, was going to the state tournament that weekend. I asked various male friends and acquaintances to go as my platonic “date,” but they had essentially all decided to boycott prom as a waste of money and/or bourgeois social ritual for the Popular Kids (which we were most definitely not; my friends were mostly on the math team, in band/choir, on the chess team, or some combination thereof). I finally ended up convincing a dear friend to come home from college that weekend and go to Prom with me, and we made an outing of it with another couple who were friends of ours. It was very low-budget; at our school you could earn money for tickets by selling candy bars for a couple of months beforehand, so anyone who wanted to go could generally come up with the money. No limo for us; I borrowed a dress from a friend of my sister’s, and our pre-prom dinner was a lovely potluck picnic on Lake Michigan. (The other couple found vintage formalwear at a thrift shiop, and looked rather stunning in an Edwardian sort of way.) Afterwards, we did our usual weekend night ritual of hanging around, including a late-night munchies excursion to Burger King, still dressed in full formal regalia. We ended up watching the sunrise over Lake Michigan, followed by an outing to our favorite local pancake house. Then we all crashed and spent most of the next day sleeping. I’m not sorry I did it, but it was far from the most memorable night out I spent in high school. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2006, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/58 "2006-10-29T23:33:00Z")
[QUOTE=Eva Luna] It was very low-budget; at our school you could earn money for tickets by selling candy bars for a couple of months beforehand, so anyone who wanted to go could generally come up with the money. No limo for us; I borrowed a dress from a friend of my sister’s, and our pre-prom dinner was a lovely potluck picnic on Lake Michigan. (The other couple found vintage formalwear at a thrift shiop, and looked rather stunning in an Edwardian sort of way.) [/QUOTE] The fact that you could work to raise money to go to the prom like this would kinda argue against the “bourgeois social ritual” thing your friends had against it, but I suppose if we can’t expect many adults to use logic in forming these opinions, we can hardly expect it of many teenagers (hell, even I make decisions based on vague things that only make sense to me sometimes). Of course, I always thought people who used words like “bourgeois” when discussing social interaction sounded mightily pretentious, but that might just be because I can’t spell the word without having to look it up 😛 In any case, I’m glad you guys found a way to have fun. I had some friends who made their prom outfits out of duck tape to cash in on a scholarship that the Duck Brand Duckt Tape company does every year ($500 for the students who do it, and $500 for their school that _let_ them do it. The catch was, I think, that you had to submit a picture proving you did it. I can’t remember if it had to be a formal picture or not. The year before, the dress code dictated that men must wear a “Tuxedo shirt, jacket, and tie”, so one guy arrived in tuxedo shirt, jacket, and bow tie… khaki shorts, athletic socks, and sneakers. The teachers thought it was hillarious, so they let him in. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2006, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/59 "2006-10-30T01:26:30Z")
[QUOTE=AWB] It’s basically a formal dinner and/or dance for high school seniors (12th graders). It’s often paid for by the juniors (11th graders), and often called The Junior Prom. [/QUOTE] At my school there was the senior prom (put on by the senior class for itself), the junior prom (put on by the junior class for itself), and the the junior-senior prom (put on by the junior class for the senior class). ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2006, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239/60 "2006-10-30T03:16:44Z")
[QUOTE=Raguleader] The fact that you could work to raise money to go to the prom like this would kinda argue against the “bourgeois social ritual” thing your friends had against it, but I suppose if we can’t expect many adults to use logic in forming these opinions, we can hardly expect it of many teenagers (hell, even I make decisions based on vague things that only make sense to me sometimes). [/quote] Well, we could raise money for the tickets, but not for clothing, dinner, etc. Not everyone had a sister with friends who actually gave a damn about this kind of thing, and therefore had a spare formal dress in my size. 🙂 > [@](#): > > Of course, I always thought people who used words like “bourgeois” when discussing social interaction sounded mightily pretentious, but that might just be because I can’t spell the word without having to look it up 😛 That was my paraphrase 20 years after the fact, but it’s entirely possible someone used that word at the time; I don’t remember, and frankly, we were quite a bunch of geeks. In any case, most of my friends really didn’t care about prom, and I wasn’t terribly worked up about it, honestly. I mostly went because I knew it would be my only chance, and didn’t want to regret it later if I didn’t go. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-proms/378239.md?page=4)