Prom season is upon us and I won’t even bore you with the agonizing details about how my sister, who was a junior in high school at the time, attended my senior prom with a boy I would have certainly gone to prom with, had he asked me.
But he hadn’t, so I sat home alone prom night while my younger sister went to MY prom with all of my senior high school friends.
Regressing here, but it’s prom season, so memories of me not going to prom flood back. And now that two of my teenagers are getting ready for their first prom, there is a lot to think about!
I’m thinking about how my son has mentioned to probably about six girls how he would ‘maybe’ ask each one of them to prom, and I know how girls think so each one probably has already gone out and bought a dress and is just waiting for that amazing promposal from him that he’s not going to deliver. Because he’s just not going to get his act together and he probably won’t ask anyone to prom.
I’m thinking about how my sophomore daughter wants to go to prom so badly that she befriended a senior at the eleventh hour and totally ‘friend-zoned’ him, making it clear to him that she is only interested in going to prom so she can get a beautiful dress and mark it off her high school bucket list that she went to prom as a sophomore. And my fear is she’ll go to this dance with this senior who may or may not have a severe crush on her and ignore him the whole entire night, and then never talk to him again. And that’s just totally rude.
I don’t want my kids to behave this way. It’s a freaking dance. A dance my son doesn’t want to really take a girl to (because there’s not one particular girl he really cares about at the moment) and one my daughter would, if she had the choice, go to with someone else. This is pretty whacked out.
Personally, I think neither of them should go.
It’s all this peer pressure that’s built up. To come up with the biggest and best Instagram-worthy promposal. To get the most beautiful dress. To outdo your friends in every aspect of the prom prep. To show up with the hottest date. To dance the night away with their friends to the best worst music ever.
It wasn’t like this when we were growing up. But then again, maybe it was? I wouldn’t know because remember, I didn’t go to my prom.
Maybe I was the lucky one to have been stuck at home on that Saturday night, bingeing on ice cream and watching The Love Boat and Fantasy Island?
Maybe.
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