Prom Night 2004 – The Same as Before

This year’s theme, Las Vegas, was quite evident, from the poker cards and fuzzy dice to the men in all-white tuxedos with tails, top hats, and even canes. Then again, men in all white suits remind me only of two kinds of folks, pimps and preachers, who sometimes are one in the same. Luckily, there was an Elvis, in full late 70’s fat Vegas mode lest you forget.

I didn’t forget. I remembered. I remembered how prom seemed so important to me fourteen (14!) years ago. How I worked hard to afford my tux. How I was so proud of my hot date, and how for me, the night was soberly anticlimactic as we were more friends than lovers, and I had her home by midnight.

The kids today had the same scene, as there was no booze to be found. I didn’t even see anyone drunk! And while the whole show was over by a relatively early midnight, they did what we did so many moons before.

No matter what its called, from the lambada, to the humpty, to the bump and grind, kids will be kids when the music is right and rub against each other with such friction you expect smoke and fire to burst forth from skirts and slacks. Now that I’ve been around I could even tell where certain dances came from, with a few jail-bait girls working it out in pure Congolese butt-dragging style.

You could say that I might’ve been looking a little too much at the jail-bait, but who wouldn’t? There were some hotties there that… wow! So off the charts that you wouldn’t get an arraignment, there would be no sentencing, just straight to the Big House with your lecherous old ass.

Escaping that fate, I ran commentary with Mom and her co-worker Lisa, laughing at the men too sexy, or just low-class, to keep on their shirts, exposing way too many wife-beater undershirts and the girls, with hurting feet, limping around barefoot.

Fully shod, we ended the night with a good dose of helium-induced squeaky laughs while taking down playing-card balloons and letting the kids pass into yet another prom night memory.