"Prom" Night

"Keep your Dinglehopper to yourself."

Before anyone starts thinking anything incidient, allow me to clarify. In Disney's the Little Mermaid, the Dinglehopper is Ariel's name for the strange metal device and little fork that one is supposed to use to crack crab legs open. Something that I, as well as several other friends, discovered cannot seem to use properly at all. Knowing that I had already paid in advance for my ticket to go see the Hangover II (the irony of which I found hysterical, even without having seen the first movie. A movie about a hangover on Prom night? Surely it was a prediction for the future), I arrived at the Red Lobsters the others had picked more or less on time. No grand limo, no rented van like my friends attending Prom were doing, just a quick bus ride and some walking.

Overall, the entire night was by far more informal than I think going to a Prom at a more Suburban school, at even the one our peers were attending would have been. None of the girls who didn't already put on makeup went 'all' out for transformations, most of us were in jeans, but most of us did at least wear something we considered to be a nice shirt. The evening started with dinner at Red Lobsters, followed by walking over to where the Hangover was playing (taking pictures the entire time), and while yes, we did need IDs, it wasn't because there were any drugs getting past around. They were just extremely careful about not letting anyone under 17 into the movie. At half an hour to midnight, we raced into the subway to make sure we could all get the cake we promised the birthday girl we would be meeting in an hour. We made it into the bakery, jumped in cabs and arrived at the Karaoke Bar where we would be meeting our friends from Prom - an hour early. Getting turned away, we bummed around the neighborhood, laughing and taking more pictures. As it creeped closer to 1AM, we went back to the Karaoke Bar, meeting up with the first few stragglers of our group. Of course, jaws dropped.

"Oh my god, you look so good~. Gorgegous! Amazing!"

I can't count how many times I heard one of us squeal this to one another. Even my original group of girls who weren't decked out in gowns and weaves earned similar compliments - is it impossible to look good on this night? Head inside, we all dished out the per person $12 and from there, the noise began. No one attempted to sing anything qualitative be it how they sang or what they sang. Everyone was loud, screaming and dancing, or at the very least, snapping pictures and singing along from the couch. At some point I remember someone put on Tik Tok by Ke$ha and we were all singing so loud everyone kept losing their breath throughout the entire song - you could hear the uniformed gasps coming from us.

The night started to end at 3AM when our booking ended. Most of us went out for food, not intending to show up for school the next day but I headed home, made it to school as the first senior in the building and then stayed the entire day anyway. Believe it or not, staying at school was a lot of fun. So was it what I expected? More or less. I expected someone to be drunk or get drunk but that never happened and I don't think it would make a difference. I didn't miss going to Prom and after listening to accounts of what music was playing, how people were acting and where it even was, I'm sure I had more fun then all of them. I don't really intend to attend any Proms but I can think of one or two friends that if they asked me, I'd go. I know if I lived in California, I definitely would have crashed the Proms of my three friends, even if that would be the cost of two proms.