This past weekend marked a significant milestone in life on the lakefront. My youngest child attended his junior prom. Prom, of course, is an event unlike any other because it is ridiculously expensive, and because the process of going to the prom is far more important than actually being at the prom.
Back in the stone ages when I went to school things were different. Fact is, it was a small town. I don’t think there was a limousine within a hundred miles and in west Texas no guy worth his salt would have been caught dead in a tuxedo. I am comfortable with the fact we were hicks, not that there is anything wrong with that. Guys got ready for prom in about ten minutes, after a five minute shower in what passes for water in Snyder, Texas; we threw on our best leisure suit, splashed on a gallon of Hi Karate After Shave, got in our car, and drove over to pick up our dates. Proving that things have not completely changed, our dates were never ready when we got there and we had to make small talk with her father. I remember it well. I said, “Hello, sir, I’m Steve.” He responded with, “Don’t get smart with me,” then adding, “touch my daughter and we’ll talk,” as he sat there in the living room cleaning his gun.
After what seemed like an eternity, our date walked into the room with her new formal dress and permanent. Being a guy, we promptly got in trouble for not noticing that she looked completely different than usual. I would like to interject here that this is not our fault, being guys with drives we have important issues on our mind like, who the Cowboys took in the draft or whether they passed on a great player and traded the pick away for a handful of magic beans or what are they going to do at quarterback this year, but I digress. So, anyway, sometimes we are not as observant about whether our date has a new dress or is in fact wearing a robe and house slippers. But after an uncomfortable silence, during which we sudden realized our faux paux, as they say in France, we would stammer out something like, “You look good and you sure do smell nice.”
We would then load up in our car and make our way to the location where the prom was held, often the National Guard armory in small towns. Where thanks to effective use of colored toilet paper, the room had been transformed into a National Guard armory with lots of colored toilet paper. Then we would dance a couple of dances to the new hits like Tequila Sunrise by the Eagles. This always seemed somewhat decadent to us because most of us had no idea what a tequila sunrise was, only that it involved drinking alcohol in the morning. In a “dry” area, your imagination ran rampant.
Anyway, back to modern times. As my son got ready for the prom, my wife cried because her baby was going to the prom with a girl. She cried when she looked at him in his new suit, she cried when he put the flower on her wrist, and when she tried to harpoon a flower onto his lapel. It was all very sensitive. I remember I tried to prove how sensitive I was by saying things like, “That suit ain’t half bad, and don’t everyone smell good.” We had arranged for everyone we knew to be at the house for the send off, where there were 45 cameras, snapping thousands of pictures as the couple groaned, “No more pictures, we have to go.” My wife cried.
Then they left for the prom, all the people stayed behind mostly to eat all my snack foods as the kids went to a restaurant for an hour, to the prom for about ten minutes, then to another restaurant, and then to the bowling alley. As I stated before, going to the prom is much more important than actually being at the prom. A few days later the bills came, and I cried.
