Do proms always suck, or is it just me? – Flashback Friday

 

Seriously?

This Flashback Friday (a first here, but probably not the last) is brought to you via Papa (who was sadly promless) and organized by Blissfully Caffeinated and The Stiletto Mom.

Junior Year Prom – 1989

(Face obscured to protect the guilty? OK, I guess it’s not his fault) Wow! How happy do I look? I think we were only there long enough to have the picture taken. I don’t remember dancing much. The guy was my boyfriend at the time, and really the first long term boyfriend I kept around (for almost a year). Our plans were to leave prom early and go out to eat with another couple. Problem No. 1 – the only place to eat was over 30 miles away, which really is only a problem because of Problem No. 2 – The boyfriend – MY boyfriend, a senior, had a curfew of 11 p.m. 11 PM CURFEW ON PROM NIGHT? WTF? By the time we did leave it was later than planned (of course), we got half way there and I’m like “we aren’t going to have enough time to even get there and back before your 11 PM CURFEW, and we will definitely not have enough time to actually eat anything when we do get there.” Because we had planned to eat out, we didn’t eat anything at prom. I was HUNGRY. He took me home and just made it home before his 11 PM CURFEW. I had just turned 16 and didn’t yet have a driver’s license or I’d have been going back to prom. Better than sitting home on a Friday Night – a Friday Night Prom Night at that – just because your boyfriend had an 11 PM CURFEW. Karma? The whole 11 PM thing would continue to …

 

Senior Year Prom – 1990

(Face obscured to protect the innocent) The reason our attire doesn’t match as nicely as the attire in the top picture is because this nice guy wasn’t my boyfriend, just a friend, and it was a last minute date. My boyfriend went to a different high school and was out of town the weekend of my prom for a chess tournament (sounds geeky, right? I was way geekier than he was, which wasn’t hard to do because he was totally not a geek. That’s not a compliment for him). My friend didn’t have a date for the prom so we decided to go together. He already had his tux. I didn’t really care about prom so I just used the same dress from our winter formal. The dress was purchased during a long Thanksgiving weekend vacation in DC at a little boutique off the Metro in Crystal City, VA (I’m so amazed I remember all that). This was the first year that prom wasn’t at the high school. I never did understand why it wasn’t at the HS. This prom was at the local college, which really wasn’t all that local to most of the students (my date had to travel almost an hour and a half). It also meant that they had less time to decorate, less people could decorate because you had to either have a car or know someone who did, and we had less room than the gym where it was usually held. Whatever. Back to my story. As the night went on, we were having a good time, but I started feeling sicker and sicker. I think by the time my nice, understanding date took me home I was barely alert. Turns out that my boyfriend had given me a little going away present before his chess tournament – strep throat. Oh, and I was home before 11 PM.

How was your prom?

In the beginning

Ever since I can remember I’ve wanted to keep a diary or journal. I bought them all the time but never wrote more than a few pages. I still buy journals – to give as gifts. Maybe I’ll inspire someone else to actually start it and finish it.

I am notorious for not completing projects. I do finish some things. I give myself 2 big deadlines a week for my work and that really helps. If I didn’t? I’d never get any of it done. Oh, I would do a lot of work, just not finish it. I’m a master of procrastination. Don’t want to work on Project C? No problem, start another one! Tired of looking at Project D? Hey, Project B still isn’t finished. Shit! Project A needs to be finished in 3 hours! Oh, I think I can wait a couple of hours to start working on it.

Brother is getting married out of state at the end of the month so I’ve been trying to get a lot of my work done ahead of time. I’m pretty shocked at how much I have ready. This will be the first day (actually 72 + hours) that I’ve had off since my vacation in 2003. I actually had 2 vacations that year – Tampa/Clearwater (lovely!) for 9 days just after my birthday in March and Myrtle Beach (oh how I loathe you!) for 8 days in October. I went both times with the same person. He was my boyfriend at the time of the March vacation but we were at the just friends stage before the October trip.

I have to start my Tuesday freelance job in about 2-3 hours (I never know exactly when it will start) so it’s time to sleep pretend that I’m going to be able to sleep.