A Girl...

Blog Prom!

Mamma asked me to the big dance and I said yes! (I think I'm supposed to *squee* here or something?...)

This weekend we're blogging about our prom experiences--with pictures!--and boy howdy, did my scanner get a workout. Luckily, I had plenty of time on my hands tonight because Simon just happens to be out for dinner and drinks in the city with some old friends, one of whom he actually went to prom with way back in the oldendays. What a co-ink-ee-dink, eh? (It should not surprise you that Simon was a teenage prom whore. One year he went to three different proms at three different schools with three different dates; his girlfriend at the time was understandably Not Happy about it.)

So, I scanned all my high school dance pictures and did some finger stretches to limber up for the tornado of typing to come, but then I realized that because I went to every dance save one with the same guy, I should probably ask his permission before I plaster him all over the internet. He checks this site and leaves comments every now and then, so hopefully he'll at least understand that there's a context for this kind of nerdery. Until I hear from him, though, we'll stick with prom. Which is the whole point. Enough with the tangents. Focus!

(Okay, this is not a tangent, but an "aside": Mamma conjured up an elaborate structure for this blog prom thing, but I'm going to ignore it. Instead of breaking up the experience over several entries, I'm going to give it all up in one night. Heh.)

I only went to one prom--my junior year--and I don't remember caring a fig that I didn't get asked my sophomore or senior years. By senior year I was definitely over the whole scene, as I was too busy being self-important, which I proved by riding around in a Volvo listening to Philip Glass with my two best friends, one of whom wore a beret at the cheekiest of angles and one of whom composed sweeping piano overtures in the style of Philip Glass in honor of that beret. (Tangent!) But junior year was before all that existential obnoxiousness. When highschoolboyfriendDavid asked me to prom in the heady spring of 1996, I accepted with grace and pleasure.

To say that he asked and I accepted is an oversimplification, though. I don't know if it's is a Mormon thing or a Utah thing or a Rocky Mountain thing, but asking someone to a dance is a big deal, a production, a contest, an ordeal. Not infrequently it involved sneaking into someone's bedroom when they weren't home or covering their front lawn with three hundred plastic forks. People asked with uncooked cow hearts left on front porches, vehicle vandalism, and singing telegrams. Usually it was something lame like posterboard with candybars taped on it ("Can I 'Skor' a date with you, 'Baby Ruth'?"), but my boyfriend was much more daring than all that. Here's how I was asked to homecoming one year:

Yikes.

That was one of five stalker notes labeled "evidence" and stuffed in an envelope and left on my windshield. (Once decoded, the letters read "Will you go to homecoming with me, Leah?")

("Agent Pussycat" explanation here. Hyphenated "for-ev-er" explanation in the movie The Sandlot.)

Kinda freaky to ask your girlfriend to a school dance by cutting out magazine letters to write things like "Don't go out or you'll never see your home again," but I think I paid him back by breaking into his house and writing YES in three-foot-tall letters on the ceiling above his bed with glow-in-the-dark stars, so it all came out even in the end.

BUT! That was homecoming and we're here to talk about prom!

Ah, prom. It was a dark and stormy night. The rain was coming down sideways. During the three-minute dash from the car to the capitol building, the salon-styled ringlet tendrils that fancied up my glorified french twist turned into limp reins I had to tuck behind my ears for the rest of the night. My outrageously expensive ($60) forest green Jessica McClintok gown was not ruined, however, because it was neither satin nor silk but some sort of impervious synthetic blend. Crisis averted.

I can't recall most of the other pre- and post-event details--where did we have dinner? what did we do afterward?--but I remember having a good time at the dance. For one, my date could dance up a storm. Two, my high school was known throughout the valley for our large-scale musical productions. With casts featuring upwards of three hundred students, it was always a trip at the school dances when the d.j. put on a track from, say, West Side Story and half of the kids broke out into fully choreographed song and dance, just like in the movies. It was just like Fame except everyone was white. And wearing imitation taffeta.