Thursday, May 1, 2008

Prom proposals

***shaking my cane*** Why, when I was a kid, if a guy wanted to ask a girl to go to the prom with him, he'd spend a week mustering up the courage to do it, then he'd put on extra deodorant one morning, and he'd go to school, walk up to her, and say, "Uh, yeah…I wuz wonderin' if maybe you'd go to prom with me." She'd either say yes, or she'd say no. That was that.

Well. Things have changed. Kids are going to great lengths and making a huge production out of asking each other to prom, and I have some mixed feelings about it. My friend Sue points out that this is excellent training for boys on how to be romantic once in a while, even if they don't come by it naturally. That's a very good point, I think. People can almost always use a little extra encouragement when it comes to looking like they care.

It's such a production, though. Kelly is going to prom with a kid named Aaron (oh, did I not mention that she broke up with Jimmy? Yeah, right before we went to Florida), who probably will not stick around long, because my dad will torture him by calling him A-Erin just like he calls The First Baseman's Godfather La-loyd. Anyway, Aaron has asked Kelly to go to prom, but he hasn't really asked Kelly to go to prom, because there has not yet filled her car with balloons, or made a garage-sized sign that says PROM? and hung it on an overpass. He has not yet come to her softball practice dressed in a tuxedo and bearing four dozen roses, nor has he landed a hot air balloon in our front yard. I've yet to come home to find our house gift-wrapped, and I certainly haven't seen Kelly's name written on the bare asses of the LaCrosse team , although if I had, I would make her marry that genius, not just go to prom with him.

Being a teenage girl was no walk in the park a lot of the time (Hey, walk in the park, and then happen upon a big chalk mural on the path that says WILL YOU GO TO PROM WITH ME), but I cannot imagine the pressure the boys are under with this extravagant prom-asking business. It must be stressful enough to be all pimply and hormonal and face the possibility of slinking off from a nice, quiet rejection, but how must it feel to get shot down out of the Goodyear Blimp?

Not only that, but all their good tricks are going to be used up before they're 20. It's hard, really hard, to keep thinking up sweet, romantic ways to tell somebody you care about them. These ideas certainly can't be recycled, can they? I mean, Kelly had a surprise romantic picnic for Jimmy on their "one-year anniversary," so she can never do that again, right? Someday, her husband is going to turn 51, and she's going to be going, "Dammit! I can't believe I wasted that one on some high school chump whose name I don't even remember."

Is this a national trend, or just a Midwest thing? What are some of the bizarro creative prom invitations you've heard about, or experienced?