I have been toying with an idea for my blog. Since I am a bit of an attention whore, I love writing about myself, but I also love the idea of incorporating other people into more of an article setting.
I’m the daughter of a newspaper man. He was good at his job, he seemed to know everyone and he’s been quoted in The New York Times (He’s the last paragraph. His name is Robert and it is completely normal for him to have the word ‘Ersatz’ in his vernacular.) He would also probably drop dead and die at my utter lack of editing or attention to grammar on this blog. When he retired he was city editor of one of the large dailies in Salt Lake City and I always thought that one day I would be a reporter. I used to love hanging out in the news room and listening to snatches of conversation going on between the other reporters and editors. I love talking to people, interviewing them and hearing their stories.
So?
I’d like to interview you all.
About what?
PROM.
Everyone has a story regarding prom, even if they never went to one. A friend of mine wrote something that has stuck with me for several years entitled, “Prom is a four letter word: A series of Haiku’s by Karen B.”
I loved that title.
It totally struck a chord with me because I had the most wretched prom. Truly, it was so pathetically heartbreaking. I know people with completely opposite stories, nights so perfect and magical that it STILL brings a smile to their face when they are well into their 30′s and 40′s.
Why does one event when you are 17 stay with you for so long?
It’s something that I would like to explore a bit more.
SO?
I want to do a three-part article series titled: Prom is a four letter word: The good, the bad, and the ugly.
I want to hear your stories about prom.
Your most memorable experiences.
The good, the bad and the ugly.
Do you think prom is the stupidest thing on the planet? A trite, overblown social ritual that should be scourged from the face of the planet? Or do you think prom was magical, necessary and validating?
I also want to hear from people who didn’t attend prom. What did you do instead? Did it end up being ok? Do you regret it?
If you have written previously about prom on your blog, send me a link. If you have read an post on another blog that you find memorable, let me know about it. If you have a great story, leave me a comment (Hopefully, with an interesting hook line to drag me in.) and maybe we can set up an interview. If this inspires you to go and write your own post about prom, let me know about it.
I’m not totally sure how all of this is going to go…It really depends on the responses I get. I know that I can’t use every story in my actual article, and even the things I do use may only be one line out of an entire post, but thanks to Mr. Linky, I can certainly links to people who have contributed or link to individual posts about their own experiences.
Talk to me.
Filed under: 
Coming to you from Fluent Brittish’s site. First of all, I never went to a prom til my Senior year of highschool. How lame am I? So anyway, worst prom story, ALL my friends, guys and girls paired up and went to prom together my junior year. Unfortunately I was the odd man (girl) out. I was at one of my friends houses as she was getting ready for the prom (stupid move on my part) when she got picked up in somebody’s giant van. About 6 couples were together. I remember I just wanted to hide. That really sucked. Then when I finally went to a prom, I had recently gotten a perm and my hair was quite curly, overly curly. When I left my house, my hair was still a bit damp with gel in it. My hair was layered and came to my shoulders. It looked fine in it’s slightly damp state. But alas, as the night progressed, my hair dried thoroughly and it boofed out into a disastrous afro! I went to the bathroom and realized the state of my hair about 3/4′s the way through. Who knows how long I looked like that… yeah, I don’t think proms were really my thing. Ha haa haaa! :) In college I went to a dance with a guy who wore a gray suit and a coral pink tie, I wore a bright blue dress and then he chose this cheesey background with a bridge and pink silk flowers, it looked like a mix between a bad wedding and a cheap funeral. There were 2 other backgrounds to choose from, but we ended up with this awful get-up. Then, I realized that half-way through the dance he kept watching my room-mate, a gorgeous Texan girl with a smoldering southern accent. All the guys loved her. Anyway, apparently he had a giant crush on her that I only discovered at the dance. And later I found out that he asked me to go to the dance because he knew we were triple dating with my Texan roommate. He hardly said 2 words to me the entire night, walked ahead of me the entire time and skipped the dinner portion of our date and just picked me up for the dance. What was I thinking?! Needless to say, I was extra careful who I dated again or who I went to dances with.
I wrote a post about this just for you.
http://mamalang.blogspot.com/2008/03/prom.html
I almost forgot to come back to this! I’ll make the actual story my Monday post, but until then here is a link to a few pictures that I know you have seen before.
http://sparkliesunshine.net/2006/11/07/my-first-self-portrait-challenge/
We don’t do “prom” in Canada. At least not in Western Canada, anyway.
Part of me is sad. And even BIGGER part of me (that would be my inner thigh) is kind of relieved.
Ah yes, the prom. I wrote about my good, bad, and mixed experiences as a junior and senior trying to get the same guy:
Hamlet was my undoing, The Prom: Take Two
LOL… I’ll have jess write the post and i’ll put my $0.02 in.
Boy is our story funny.
My boyfriend is not the type to dance or get dressed up. So when he agreed to go to the prom with me, I was psyched. I was actually going to see him in a tux. When we discussed plans, he told me that we could meet at my house so our families could meet, and we could do pictures. This was the first time we were going to meet each other’s families. Everything was perfect, and I was waiting for his arrival. My parents answered the door, and there was silence. My boyfriend was standing there in a lime green tux! At first I was humiliated, but as the night grew on, I realized how great of an icebreaker it was. And best of all, it got our picture all over the yearbook.