Throwback Thursday – Prom and Circumstance

My niece is looking for a prom dress. This dress is the most important article of clothing in the world. It must be perfect. It must not only flatter but enhance and beyond that, it must meet with the approval of the Wardrobe Committee – her girlfriends who have individual veto power over each contender. They’re not shopping with her. They’re receiving selfies, one at a time, as she shops with her parents who are nearing their wits’ ends. One gown almost made the cut until one of the Committee members responded to it with a text that read, “Ewwwww!”   

I didn’t go to my high school prom. There was a mistake somewhere in my high school records and while all of my classmates graduated, I had to take another semester because I was short one credit. I had already been accepted to college when this mathematical error occurred. The whole thing left me bitter and so I avoided my prom and my grad. 

But I did go to my grade 8 graduation and it was supposed to be sort of a prom rolled into one except that our Principal belonged to a religion that forbade dancing. So there was no dancing at our dance. We had a DJ and a gym and boys on one side and girls on the other. And that was it! Thanks again Mr. Fretz. You too Kevin Bacon for not going to my school and saving dancing like you did in Footloose.

Me in my grade 8 grad gown that looks like a powder blue and pink curtain with lots of lace trim. I'm also wearing white platform shoes standing out back of our house with a 1970's era lawn chair in view

I could have cropped this photo but then I would have lost the groovy lawn chair cushions. Oh sure, my flouncy, flowy dress with its huge, lacy sleeves might seem dated now, but once you see me with my classmates, you’ll know it was the height of fashion that year.

Five girls including me all wearing similar dresses under the sign for Gainsborough Elementary School

I still think about those white platform shoes! Debbie, Lori, me, whatserface and Pam all looked pretty similar. We didn’t have text or Snapchat. If we did selfies we had to wait for the photo to develop or worse, take the roll of film to have it developed. You’d go shopping with your Mom or Dad and just hope like hell you weren’t getting something freakishly unlike what everybody else was wearing. And we survived! And my, don’t we look quaint? 

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