When a cluster of my middle part ‘do curved upward and harpooned me in the eye at my high school senior year’s Welcome Back dance, the two of us determined it was best we go our separate ways. Decidedly, 17 years of loyalty to the look of Christina Ricci’s Wednesday from ‘The Adams Family’ was more than enough to compensate for any of the split’s ensuing resentment.
By either the good graces of a largely superficial class of 2006 ‘- which seemed to have taken notice to the transformation ‘- or the efforts of a friend’s makeshift Ticonderoga-on-Legal Pad campaign, I emerged from obscurity in the subsequent months and was unexpectedly crowned prom king. Had the occasion’s majority known that I would return to my friend’s basement minutes later to watch Jodi Foster’s ‘Flight Plan’ masterpiece and toss expired cold cuts onto the face of my friend’s fast-asleep, anonymous pity date, this may not have been the case.
Because I had not planned to be called up to a stage beside the likes of the record-breaking fullback or the girl whose dad worked for Coors, I couldn’t rid the idea that the night wasn’t the consummate prom royalty affair. My moment in the spotlight with a scented marker-accented leopard crown and Helvetica Condensed sash was much appreciated, but I wondered if it could have been something more significant under different pretenses; the idea that riding in a limo instead of an 18-passenger conversion van or experiencing the time-honored application of my jacket’s boutonni’egrave;re by my date’s fingers instead of her overzealous father’s suddenly intrigued me. Like President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize or ‘Arrested Development’s’ cancellation, things just seemed a little too premature, and I wasn’t sure I was totally ready for the distinguished honor.
As much as we hope for it, we are almost never granted the chance to go back in time and shed the residual regret of our high school years’ hiccups. You can try to forget that time you cackled at the mention of vas deferens in anatomy, or your acrylic face paint’s avowal that ‘Central sucks!’ a day before the pep rally, but trust that each are still the subject of your classmates’ ‘I miss home’ Facebook message threads. And we generally carry on because we don’t really have a choice, and there are only so many times our mothers can scathingly inquire ‘How many times did you vote for yourself?’ before we are plagued with uncertainty.
But for the College of Communication bunch, there is a second chance at prom. And for some of us, a third, fourth and fifth chance. Forget about the fact that your dance floor clumsiness and lumberjack build gave your crush’s foot a hairline fracture a week before graduation ‘- it doesn’t matter! COM Prom means no one is sober enough to know what feet are and a catered pastry spread immense enough to soak up your Seagram’s-and-fruit-punch-from-Tedeschi’s cocktail.
Don’t like the way you were forced out of the Best Western Executive Suites function hall without a chance to tell that special someone how you really felt? No worries! At COM Prom, everyone is too distracted by police escorts to notice your impending rejection. And, if you’re feeling especially determined, you can tell a handful of special someones how you feel until one inevitably confuses your lewd pass for a compliment on her ruffled H&M dress and misguidedly obliges to your erotic proposal.
Aware of the boundless opportunities allotted to me, I couldn’t help but wonder as the clock approached midnight and I made my final concerted efforts to decipher the lyrics of Britney Spears’s ‘3’ if Prom 2009 had developed into the bedtime fairy tale that I had cheated myself out of a few years before. My shirt this time around was purple and its size was European, so it seemed I had made some progress, but I just didn’t know if it was enough. I couldn’t bear the thought that I had come up short again, especially since my fly was still up and I wasn’t missing a shoe.
‘ True, there is no crowning ceremony at prom when you’re in college. At 21, I realized, it is much more important and significant that I tip my cap to the bellhop in the lobby and make it to Spike’s before it closes.
As I detail the final moments of the evening’s conclusion in my head ‘- giving taxi driver Alonso a 56 percent tip while nodding along to his assertion that ‘None of this is worth it, man ‘- none of it’ ‘- I’m hard-pressed to say I didn’t come out on top. It really was a dream come true.
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