Our song at prom was Billy Joel’s “This is the Time,” hardly an appropriate song for the young and fresh-faced teenagers that we were. But the prom committee had to choose between that and “My Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades,” by Timbuk 3.
Depressing thought number 1: that was nearly half my life ago.
Depressing thought number 2: none of the whippersnappers I work with had heard of the Timbuk 3 song.
Depressing thought number 3: I’ve lost touch with most of my high school classmates, including the guy I should have gone to the prom with, who got up and danced on the table while my date sat there like a lump.
Ah, prom. The past couple years were decent, but everytime the place is worse than Zsa Zsa’s last six marriages. We have it in this near-barn establishment every year, a place that refuses to acknowledge the existance of air conditioning. They say that “there are no other places.” Well, to prove them wrong, we created a semi-formal at a better place this year. In fact, the semi-formal is coming up in 3 weeks, while the prom is coming up sometime in May.
If you forgoe the stupid customs and traditions you hear every wanna-be-Ringwald spout knowingly from the idiot box, it is actually pretty fun I’ve found. Also, we have never had a song, nor do I really want one. That would be teh suxzor.
Oh, and no, I can not wait till I am so old that I look back and smile approvingly on these younger endless days. I both don’t and do want to get out of this innocently hectic lifestyle.
Gee, I don’t exactly remember much about prom. Well, okay, we had our photos taken at Burger King next to the ballpit, and we arrived in a 20-year-old beater pickup. But I don’t remember the music.
Oddly enough I’ve been finding my old high school classmates lately, nearly ten years later. I’m 200 miles from where I went to school, but many of my old HS pals live up here now.
It was our song, too, despite the fact that my junior prom was in 1993. And it had been my brother’s prom song five years earlier, as well. I never understood why proms need themes.
I didn’t go to mine. My boyfriend broke up with me in April (just when ticket sales started) because, he would feel uncomfortable being a junior in a room full of seniors. He quickly qualified that to “male junior” (since many senior boys were dating junior and sophomore girls). We did get back together in July for a few months, tho. Then broke up again while I was a freshman in college (away from home) and he was still in highschool
in retrospect, it was a good thing - if we’d stayed together, I’d have ended up alone most of the time because he went to med shcool and his free time was almost non existant
Junior year, I went with a really good friend. Just to have a good time and see what the fuss was about. Not a lot of poignant memories, it was more of just a fancy dress-up date.
Senior year got complicated. I had a girl I was seeing at my school. I had played ball a couple summers for a Legion team a couple towns over, and my buddy on that team kept trying to fix me up with his neighbor. Supposedly, she was all beautiful and about a month before prom, her jerkoff boyfriend dumped her.
So I said yeah, I’ll meet her. Oh my. Beautiful, funny, sexy, everything a 17 year old has wet dreams over. And she liked me.
Now I have two proms to go to, on consecutive weekends. The rental folks loved me, I had to rent two tuxedos because of the different color dresses. My home-school GF had no clue, but my buddy’s neighbor girl knew the score, and was cool with it.
Both proms had the same theme - Colour My World by Chicago. The worst song possible by the band I hated the most. I had a great time at both proms, but it was the beginning of the end for me and the girl in my own school. Right after prom, she went batshit crazy, in anticipation of my going off to school. She was there for another year, being a junior.
The girl in the next town, for us that was the beginning of the beginning, and we spent most of the next 5-6 years dating on and off.
I was and am anti-prom. I had no interest in going in 1973 and I feel sorry for the kids who aren’t asked. It’s your first major social slap in the face.
I also think kids today spend waaaaay too much money on the event (for the most part). The dresses, limos, hotel, pre-prom, post-prom, flowers, etc. just seems like such overkill to me. I mean, if they’re doing that much for high school prom, what will their weddings look like in order to be the super-duper big day?
Didn’t go to prom my Junior or Senior year. At our prom you had to have a date, which very effectively left me out.
Junior year was tough as I was class president. I worked my butt off all year to raise the money to pay for the prom and I didn’t even get to go.
Senior year was worse.
A friend of mine from previous school years had moved back and was now, again, going to the same school as me. In an effort to get me to actually ask girls out, I had long since given up, we made a bet about me getting a date for the prom. Unfortunately, his big mouthed girlfriend let the rest of the school in on the bet. So every girl I showed any interest towards, only thought I was trying to win a bet. The nightmare was that a girl I really liked, decided to play along with the idea that she may blackmail my friend for a cut of his winnings.
I found out about this in an awful way. We had this one teacher, a real jerk, who felt that he was really ‘with it’ and each Friday, class was optional. Instead of social studies, the class could have a ‘rap session’. Yes, I said rap session. Anyway, I was passing by his classroom and heard my name. The girl I liked was in there and everyone was discussing the bet and what an idiot I was, and basically how weird it was for me to even think that anyone would go out with me. I recently saw Merry Wives of Windsor and I realize that I was Falstaff.
Junior year, our theme was The Best of Time by Styx. I don’t remember what the Senior year theme was.
I remember drinking gin, eating lilacs, throwing up purple, and my friends pouring me into bed. I still love lilacs (smelling them anyway), but I haven’t had another drop of gin to this day.
Try getting called 2 hours before the dance to sub for your date’s first choice. I had no dress, nothing. Top it off with the knowledge that you weren’t your date’s first choice, and that makes for a fun evening. :rolleyes:
The theme song for my prom was Bob Seger’s version of “We’ve Got Tonight.” Somehow, the nuns that ran my all-girl Catholic high school must have missed the lyrics.
What a nutty experience the whole thing was. I ended up prom queen by luck of the draw, literally. (Hey, you expect 200-odd girls to vote for the queen?) My date, not my first choice, behaved like such an ass the entire evening that my friends’ dates were taking turns buying drinks for me, dancing with me, etc. So I managed to have a reasonably good time anyway, despite the jerk.
I remember we froze during the “obligatory” ride on the Staten Island Ferry, because it was windy out on the water and nobody was dressed for it. (To this day, I’ve never been back to Staten Island. Weird.) Then eventually we headed back toward home, dropping off my jerk date before getting breakfast at the local Greek diner. And I do think it was the only occasion in history that my parents would watch me get in the door at 8:30 a.m. and not give me a world of grief.
But that was more than half my life ago, now. sigh
The guy I really liked asked me…and two other girls. When we all got together and realized what he had done, we decided that none of us would go with him, just to teach him a lesson.
But see, the thing is…I had my fingers crossed. I told you I really liked him! So I went to the prom with him, but that was the only time we ever went out. A week later, he was dating one of the other girls.
I went to a couple of other proms as well…At one, my friend’s date and I decided we liked each other more than our own dates, which did not go over well. At the other prom I went to, I think we danced one dance before changing clothes and heading to the beach to get drunk and puke, like any other weekend.
I did not go to a prom of my own. However, when I was a freshman in college, my GF was still a senior and I took her to her prom. This scored big brownie points for her 'cause she had a college guy as a date. I got big brownie points scored for me 'cause I knew the guys in the band. Neal Ford and the Fanatics were lighting up Houston at the time and their big hit was “Thoughts of You”. Neal dedicated it to me and GF. Needless to say, I had a LOT more fun after the prom than during it.
