I didn’t plan on going to prom. I really didn’t. Back in high school, things were pretty much the same for me. I wasn’t all that lucky with girls. I did have one girlfriend in my freshmen year, but that lasted a week. We became good friends after, and then she moved away. The rest of my high school experience was more of an I-have-a-crush-on-her kind of deal. And, I had plenty of crushes.
I even have one of those “the one that got away” stories.
Suffice to say, I was a geek. And, I was friends with a lot of people, most of whom were girls.
One of these girls was named – should I name her? I guess. I doubt anyone will read this. Her name was Becky. She was short, pretty, blonde, and I remember vividly how we first met. I was put in the wrong history class during my tenth grade year, so I arrived at my correct destination the second day of school. There was one seat open in the class, and it was right next to my buddy Brandon. It also happened to be behind Becky.
I didn’t know her. But, Brandon did. I got to know her through her interaction with him. She also had this habit of letting her hair drape across the top of my desk. It could’ve been annoying but I could’ve cared less. What’s hair in the grand scheme of things? Well, one day, I pretty much just started playing with it. She, of course, turned around, confused as to what this guy she’d never spoken to was doing with her hair.
“Are you playing with my hair?”
I answered honestly. “Yeah.”
She smiled and turned back around. I played with her hair for the rest of the year.
And, we became friends. Close friends. She always seemed to be there for me. Man, I seriously miss her.
Anyway, so prom comes along. Of course I don’t buy a ticket. What would’ve been the point? No one would go with me, and my friends all had dates. I’d be hanging out with myself for most of the night. I also didn’t drink or do drugs. Not because I was told to never do those things. I just never – and have never – understood the point. To this day, I’ve never done either. And, I don’t regret it. I’ll stick to drinking Dr. Pepper and eating snacks without having to smoke beforehand.
So, prom to me wasn’t going to be about getting laid or getting wasted. Fuck what the movies say. This was my life and it was chaste. Well, aside from some massive Superbad-like dirty talk with my pals and all the softcore porn I watched throughout my formative years.
One day during lunch, Becky came over to me and explained that her boyfriend couldn’t get off work the night of prom. Then, she asked me to go with her. Without even considering it, I said, “Yes.” This was on a Thursday. I didn’t even have a tux. I had to – with the help of my mom and my brother – piece together one through different means. In the end, though, I had something resembling a tux. I even bought her a corsage.
And, prom was nice. Our administrators did their jobs well. No drinking was had inside the premises. No one had to be separated from dancing too close. And, as far as I could tell everyone who was there wanted to be there. It wasn’t a Hollywood-style prom. Sorry. But, my time in high school did not reflect movies at all. It didn’t even reflect what I’ve read about high school before and since. I guess people just experience things differently.
That was be a big “Duh!” moment.
But, things are what they are. Although, my prom wasn’t R-rated, it wasn’t Disney’s Prom either. And, to that, I say, “No shit.” I also say that it’s just another movie. So, obviously it doesn’t reflect my reality. But, the more I read about Prom, the more I get distanced from reviewers. When I read about how their prom was "the single most sexually charged night of adolescence,” I think – “Wow. For a lot of people, sex was a big thing in high school.”
It wasn’t for me. And, it wasn’t for a lot of people I knew. In fact, I can count the number of people I knew on one hand who had sex in high school. I also never spent much time trying to have any either. I guess I had better things to do with my time.
So, why am I writing about all of this? Well, I’m just curious to see if my high school was just special. Do movies correctly reflect that sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll are actually a major part of high school, or not? If anyone’s reading this, please let me know.
Because the more and more I read about Prom the more I’m afraid of people. Apparently, sex and getting drunk were necessary to make the movie more “realistic.” Really? Because it makes it un-realistic to me. Hell, the way prom looks in the film, it look similar to how my school had it set up. No fountain though. That would've been cool.
I look forward to renting Prom on Blu-ray one day, because something tells me it’ll reflect closer to my night with Becky than anything Superbad, John Hughes, or Easy A could show. My prom night wasn’t dirty. It wasn’t Disney. It was just normal.
