Sleepless in Seattle.
May 11, 2008
She brushed her hair back with a wave of insecurity. Her pink dress kept riding down, exposing a black bra. I wondered who the black strapless bra was for, underneath her informal prom dress, on a night where she was one of two dateless girls at a table full of couples.
Would I have ever dared show up at prom without a date? I recall breaking up with my high school boyfriend multiple times before prom, and even going so far as asking a friend if he’d accompany me in the case that the breakup stuck this time. The breakup didn’t, the boyfriend didn’t, and senior prom was a bit of a bust. Even the catering hall’s power thought so, as it went out halfway through our dinner.
The undeclared photographer of her table, she kept looking around, watching, waiting to see who was talking about her. I asked Princess Pointful, “Were you this insecure in high school?” Without so much as a pause, she said, “Yes.” It surprised me, to know that someone who is so aware of who she is now, was maybe almost too aware of who she was then. Though it seems that’s the nature of high school.
A girl in a lime green dress sat alone with her lime-green vested date, and frowned most of her way through dinner. He tried to make her laugh, but she was too busy watching the two tables of high-school prom goers that surrounded us. We watched her, wondering if she had just had a falling out with one of the other girls at one of those tables. Wasn’t that all high school was? Uninvitations, blocked memories, girls putting each other down. I once had a bully take my can of soda and drink the entire thing in one gulp. At least it wasn’t my lunch. I don’t care to remember much else about high school.
At yet another table behind us, more dresses slipped down, showing black bras, nude bras, and bare backs. These kids had credit cards, cell phones, their dresses skimmed their thighs and reached just below their non-existent cleavage. Princess and I talked about how we didn’t get credit cards till college, how puberty hit us at different points. For me, it was after I went to college that my chest exploded with first C-cups, and now D.
One has to wonder, what’s in store for these girls? Their prom, so different from mine, involved going out to dinner first and to a dance later. Would they go home with their dates, fingers fumbling beneath corseted backs, safety pins, and laces, underwear sliding off, pants unzipping? Or would they shuffle out of barely heeled shoes, shimmy out of low-swinging dress, plug in a USB cable and upload pictures of their table laughing and drinking non-alcoholic Mojito Breezes, wishing there was someone to slide the corsage off their wrist?
I have pictures from my own proms, junior and senior, where I took silly pictures with my then-boyfriend, as though it would be the time of my life. It wasn’t then, it wasn’t now. I don’t even know where those pictures are anymore; for all I know, they may have been thrown out during one of my many moves.
I wanted to tell the girl in the lime green dress to stop fretting. It’s just one night. Let your date make you laugh, smile a bit, whatever’s got you down is going to be all over in a matter of weeks. I wanted to tell the girl in the pink dress, stop looking around; don’t wear your insecurity on your sleeve. You’re already stronger than I was at seventeen, showing up dateless when I had a roster of guys recruited in case my boyfriend and I broke up again. I admire you. But I can’t, when you don’t even admire yourself.
How do you tell a seventeen year old girl the things you’ve learned when you’re not much older than she?
Entry Filed under: Carmen Sandiego wannabe, Childhood revisited, Compelling randomness, I can be a girl. Sometimes.. .
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1.
BondiBetty | May 11, 2008 at 5:15 pm
You can’t tell her, she won’t listen even if you do. Because if you remember they were the hardest lessons to learn, but the most valuable.
2.
Lara | May 11, 2008 at 6:16 pm
It’s too bad that they have to learn their own lessons. A few kids seem to realize that they can learn from other people, but most think they are the only ones to feel the way they do. Think how much they could accomplish, and how much earlier, if only they didn’t waste the time re-hashing the things we could have taught them.
I absolutely adore your writing. The way you paint a picture with words is simply amazing.
3.
brandy | May 11, 2008 at 6:34 pm
I was just thinking about this a few weeks ago when I ran into girls doing prom shopping. They all looked so… ‘done’, with perfect highlights and filed nails. It wasn’t until I heard them talking to each other and worrying so much about their night that I realized how young they still were.
4.
Tin Ma'am | May 11, 2008 at 6:57 pm
I remember i was so in love (and I do still love) the man I went to prom with. On my blog, he’s known as Guile, he’s the best friend I’ve ever had and even though I’m not IN love with him anymore, I was back then. i remember each touch was electric, each kiss was magical. I miss it.
5.
libby | May 11, 2008 at 8:28 pm
i loooooooved this. i don’t really remember much of prom. i went stag. i am as innocent now as i was then. the girl with the usb cable. or should is say fuji film? haha. retrospect is so so funny. thinking about how GRAND and grown up you were because it was senior prom. pshh.
i do remember that the last song they played was ‘time of your life’ by greenday.
6.
Lara | May 11, 2008 at 9:05 pm
they’ve got to learn it for themselves, just like we did. for better or worse.
7.
Jack | May 11, 2008 at 10:46 pm
I don’t think I could ever talk that kind of sense into the high school version of myself.
8.
Ashley | May 12, 2008 at 4:56 am
I never went to my proms so I missed out on all that. Its easy for us to look back and see how if we had just stopped worrying so much about everyone else we could have had a good time. Hindsight is always 20/20. Unfortunately we can’t give advice to teenagers because did we listen to what we were told then? Absolutely not. We live, we learn.
9.
Travis | May 12, 2008 at 6:21 am
I never went to prom or any of those other school dances, so being the emo-punk I am, I’d probably say, “C’mon, let’s get out of here and go see mewithoutYou.”
10.
Margarita | May 12, 2008 at 6:45 am
To go back to my teenage years with what I now know about the world and my improved self-esteem . . . life would have been so much easier. But I guess you have to live through it to get to where you’re at, right?
11.
Lauren | May 12, 2008 at 7:31 am
Sadly, you can’t. It’s something they have to ultimately learn on their own.
I taught high school last year and tried to instill the lessons i’ve learned. But as all 16 year olds do, they tuned me out, thinking I was older, I didn’t know them, I just couldn’t understand.
The thing was, I understood better than they could imagine.
12.
Larissa | May 12, 2008 at 8:04 am
Our high school selves need to all learn some of those things through experience. I know I did!
13.
Megan | May 12, 2008 at 10:38 am
I never listened when I was seventeen. I’m only nineteen now, but I feel like such a different person than I was then. My sister is now seventeen, and I try advising her countless times, but she just pretends to listen.
14.
Yoda | May 13, 2008 at 9:27 am
D cups? I couldn’t really concentrate on the post after that
15.
Rwin | May 13, 2008 at 1:46 pm
My prom date was so awesome I married him.
Hehe.
16.
poodlegoose | May 26, 2008 at 8:49 am
I was just thinking about prom the other day, as well. I went with my, now, ex-boyfriend, and I had a horrible time. Most of the time, I wish I’d just gone with a group of girls and had a good time.
I like the way this was written. . . your writing makes me think