A Night to Remember

Hip hip hooray for new followers! Again, thanks to everyone who reads. I can't explain to you how encouraging it is to receive texts and emails from people who say that they've been reading. Your participation validates my experience somehow and takes it beyond just an online journal to a communal experience. I don't know how this works, but it makes my experience more powerful to know that you're sharing it with me. Thank you!

So tonight I got the opportunity to volunteer at the coat check for West's prom. I try not to take these experiences for granted because how many adults can relive such authentic, nostalgic experiences like prom. Because of working for Young Life, I get a front row seat for classic, all-American traditions and rites of passage like state football, choir concerts, and school dances. Can you remember your own prom? Your date? Your tux or dress? Where you ate? Limo or Uncle Larry's borrowed Mercedes? Last song? After party?

Prom hasn't changed much over the years. Sure the DJ plays different songs and the styles of dresses and suits changes a little over time. But in a lot of respects kids are the same as they were "back then". Some are excited for the chance to get all dressed up and come the closest they can to imitating what it is to be an adult. Some kids know they're supposed to go and so they participate in all the traditions and try to have fun despite feeling completely awkward in a series of foreign situations. And then others sit at home; some perfectly content ignoring the event completely and others longing to be there, wishing they'd been asked or had someone to ask, wishing they'd been a part of all the pomp and circumstance.

The rainbow of sherbet colored dresses paraded by my station. The rhinestones sparkled on their straps, shoes, and hair barrettes. The guys discarded their jackets at the coat check without regard for their already wilting boutonnieres. The flowers just serve as a type of clock indicating the impending stroke of midnight where the charade will be over, the carriages will turn into pumpkins, and these debutantes and princes will turn back into kids.

Adolescence is a crazy, confusing, uncomfortable, and yet still magical time of life. Prom is a microcosm of those years; old enough to desire all the aspects of adulthood, but too young to actually understand what that entails. It's a beautiful time (aside from all the acne. Though I'm 28 and still struggling with bad skin, so maybe that's just a symptom of my delayed adolescence).