This is the first in a 3-day series on my high school prom. Part 2 will be posted on Thursday, and Part 3 on Friday.
As a taller than average twelfth grader, my prospects for getting a date to the senior prom are grim. Options A to X: Guys who are shorter than me. Who wants to shuffle to Stairway to Heaven with a horny teen who’s eye-level with your boobs? Memories of Junior High dances are better left repressed.
Option Y: The guy who recently took me to a movie who’s now an alumnus. He’s an obvious choice, except for the unfortunate incident involving a firearm. This date was nearly over before it began. In a she’s-my-little-sister moment out of the Ozarks, my brother joked about scaring away Option Y with a gun. As Option Y drove into our farmyard, my brother headed to the front closet, a grin widening across his face. I sprinted for Option Y’s Monte Carlo, yelling, “Let’s go! Now!” Meanwhile, my brother flung open the screen door of our house, stepped onto the porch and fired the shotgun into the air. It was funny to my brother, I suspect.
When you live on a farm, when the closest town boasts a population of 500, and when you’re graduating with only twenty-nine other students, there are not a lot of date prospects. All previous “dateable” graduates have long since fled town like cockroaches from a can of Raid. Not wanting to attend my prom with a shrimp or a relative, I search my address book and discover Option Z, my former pen pal.
Option Z seems like a good enough choice to be my date for this event-of-a-lifetime: he knows many of my friends, has never seen my family’s collection of firearms, and is over six feet tall. Plus, we attended eighth grade together. We may even have swayed to Zeppelin, his thirteen-year-old mop of hair reaching my chin at the time. Eventually, he left our small school and moved to a metropolis half a continent away, where, thankfully, he grew taller. We kept in sporadic contact via snail mail. Then, mere weeks before my prom, he moved back to a neighboring town. I was quick to fabricate the illusion of an eighteen-year-old sophisticated city boy who might be able to slow-dance without stepping on my size tens.
In retrospect, I should have been the strong woman and gone solo to the prom like my friend, who was also six feet tall. So what if her independence was shattered by a surprise pregnancy a few months later. It was with her, while doing yearbook layouts late into the night, I crafted our list of Ten Types of Guys We Have to Date before Getting Married. By the end of my escapade with Option Z, I had checked off three of those descriptors: someone your mother would hate, someone who’s bad for you, and someone with out-of-control red hair.
To be continued…
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Okay, fess up. Did you go to prom? Who were your date options?
I went to prom alone after my date decided a championship soccer game was more important. Not one of the best nights of my life.
Ouch. It may have been worse if she were with you, however. Maybe you lucked out?
Went to prom with my then girlfriend. We were more interested in the after party than the prom itself.
I get that.
We had a junior prom and a senior prom, and I went to both. My junior prom date was my 21-year-old boyfriend. Yeah…my parents were thrilled. He was shorter than me when I put on heels. I went with a different boyfriend to my senior prom, who was taller than me.
Nothing like the 21yo boyfriend to put parents at ease when you’re sixteen…
Howled at the Ozarks gun incident with your brother.
OddWackyStory-fodder behavioUr runs in the family, eh?[I’m practicing Canadian speak-and-spell in preparation for my weeks (plural) long visit with Sherry Isaac in Toronto in July/August.]
Now, if I could find a way to fit centre into this comment…
Yes, I went to my HS prom. With my HS sweetheart. I wore a dress I made, and hemmed it while sitting in a hair salon chair, waiting for her to turn my yucky brown mop into a thing of beauty. She failed. The hem survived the night.
Can’t wait for the next installments. One quick question. Inquiring mind-of-mine begs to know: Why is your graduation pic taken with a pie chart as the backdrop?
Those U’s are looking mighty natural, Gloria. You’ll fit right in. If I wore a dress I’d sewn, I wouldn’t be allowed in. That is talent I do not have.
The grad pic was taken in a small Catholic church. Pie graphs were big in the 80s. 😉
Can’t wait to read the next installments. We had a junior prom, and I went with one of my best guy friends. He would have been taller than me except my hair was massive.
Option Y was one of my best guy friends. That would’ve been a better option, especially since I started dating him a few weeks later.
I went to senior prom solo, by choice, waving my independent “I don’t need a man” attitude around like a banner. My father bought my corsage. However, when it came to photo-taking, I grabbed three of my friends’ dates, and my senior prom pic is forever me surrounded by three tuxedoed guys. I’ve made up some great stories about that pic over the years. 🙂
Now that is brilliant, Julie. I’d love to hear the stories…
Ha! Oh my gosh, I’m on the edge of my seat for parts 2 and 3! This ginger definitely sounds like trouble…
I never went to prom because I wound up getting my GED when I was 16 (long story). As a fellow tall girl with size 10 feet, I feel your pain. Although, I wound up marrying someone three inches shorter than me! It takes a real man to be with a tall woman!
16? Precocious young thing! And I love what you said about “real men.” Lovely.
My prom was a nightmare. My date ended dating another guy and leaving with him. It was straight out of a 90210 episode.
Yikes. Stay tuned…especially for Part 3.
I was asked to prom once. Quite thrilling for a dorky home schooled girl.
I refused him, though. And he cried, right then and there. Big tears, too. Hormones are like a towel snap on a naked butt, aka, they bring instantaneous tears to your eyes.
I love your hormones analogy. Brilliant!
I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to hear the rest of the story,,,,
I’m hoping you’re not being sarcastic…
This is great!
I went stag twice, and between the two years I think I spent less than $60 on everything, including tickets, dresses and food. 🙂 What can I say? I’m thrifty. And I would’ve been a cheap date. But, I wasn’t. The good thing is, though, that I have no regrets from the overhyped, high-pressure event we call prom.
Smart woman, you. At my school (and in Canada generally) we only have one prom (Gr 12). I am thankful.
No prom, no Sadie-Hawkins/Tolo (thanks to a cousin with Chicken-Pox who shared for Christmas) no homecoming, no formal dances in High School. But I went “stag” with a bunch of gal friends to every other school dance we could in hopes that someone would forget I was 4 inches taller than almost every boy in school.
I explain to my kids that this is all they need to know about why I am what I am…
That height difference: awkward, eh?
Surprisingly, I had a prom date. The surprise is not because of height. At 6’2″ I rarely have a problem with that. However, I was afraid to ask girls out. Don’t remember how I got up the courage to ask this one. I think we had two or three other dates.
I can get that fear. I remember asking boys to dance at school dances. Scary!
I went to my junior prom with “just a friend.” It actually ruined our relationship. LOL. At the end of the night, after a post-prom party we attended, I ran up to my front door as fast as I could so he wouldn’t try and kiss me. Our friendship was never the same again.
I went to my senior prom with my then boyfriend. I had a nice time, but it wasn’t anything special to write home about.
The Harry-Met-Sally theory, perhaps? And “nice time” is about as good as it gets, I suspect. Thanks for commenting, Tiffany.
OH GOD not prom memories. Horrible dress. A guy I had to BEG to take me that was older than me but in a Grade below me (great visual I’d imagine) and since my BFF flunked out her senior year…I went without a crew of friends.
I moved to another city 5 days after prom. Thank god! LOL!
Can’t wait to read the next instalment!
I was laughing at your first line. I like your fight-or-flight response. It took me two months to move 2500 kms away.
Flashbacks. Loved your humorous choices. I turned down two offers to go to our high school prom and decided to work at it instead. It had an Asian theme and one student loaned me his mother’s kimona. Loved the look. Still questioning – after all these years – why I decided not to go with a date.
I’d love to wear a kimono. Once. And a sari.
Prom! Can’t wait to hear the rest of the story! You had some tough options. I went to prom as a junior with a senior I literally barely knew but he was the mysterious school hottie and needed a date (because he was ‘that’ mysterious) and I took one for the Ginger-Team and volunteered. (squeee!!) Then I went to ‘my’ prom with a friend. It was fun because there wasn’t that boyfriend/girlfriend pressure.
Sounds like you emerged rather unscathed, Ginger. School hottie? Mysterious or not: nice. 😉
I cannot wait to read the rest of this! I was determined to go to my senior prom, making it only the 2nd high school dance I attended. I took a guy friend, who happened to be a freshman. He was mature for his age and the younger brother of another good guy friend of mine. Most of my friends weren’t dating their dates so we had a great time together as a group. Unfortunately, he’d played a soccer tournament that day and was completely wiped out. But he danced with me for all the slow songs so I give him credit!
If you have someone to dance the slow songs with, that’s all that matters. Especially if that person isn’t breast height.
I had two dates. One was my very good gay friend who had graduated from the same school the previous year – he knew everyone, so it was easy to have a great time on his own. The other had been my first boyfriend a couple of years previously & who I was still good friends with. (I didn’t feel pressure to go with anyone as a date-date!)
I went to Junior prom with my old friend Todd. And it was just…great. Easy. No pressure. We had an awesome time, and we are still in and out of touch.
In 12th grade, my boyfriend went to another school. And we had broken up, so one of my guy friends asked me to go. Again, great guy. At the end of the night, when Jay dropped me off, A white Caddilac slithered down the road. I jumped in and let’s just say my boyfriend and I made up. *cough* When Jay learned that my night had continued after drop-off, he was mad. When I think about it now, it was a little cruel. I’m sure he was teased, and it definitely showed a lack of character on my part.
But it was prom.
And it was freakin’ fun. And I’d probably do it again. I think.
Went to prom with a friend – I asked him. We looked fabulous (both wore black) and went in a limo with many other friends. I don’t remember the prom itself as being anything to write home about but the afterparty ROCKED.
Plus we stopped into the Playboy Club in Century City (in Los Angeles where i grew up) and thought we were all big and bad because they let us in to dance. 🙂