C.H. Armstrong Books

Dear Readers:

Before I begin today’s blog, I have to take a moment to comment on yesterday’s blog (Cell) Phone Sex.  You people seriously crack me up!  My goal in writing this blog is to make you laugh, but yesterday you made me laugh!  What is it about sex that sells?  I put sex in the title of a blog and I receive my all-time-high number of hits for a single day.  Within two hours of posting yesterday, I received as many hits as I normally receive in an entire day.  All I can surmise is that y’all like sex!  It’s seriously tempting to find a way to put the word S-E-X in every title of every blog post going forward just to see if I can significantly increase my readership!

In all seriousness, though…thank you for the response to my blog yesterday.  I wish I could take credit for its creativity; but, alas, I cannot.  If not for the MSNBC article yesterday, and those crazy people who can’t put their cell phones down, I would’ve had no blog yesterday.  

Now…onto today…there will be NO S-E-X in today’s blog because, as you can see, it’s all about PROM!  Enjoy!

Chatty Cathie

Last weekend was Prom at my daughter’s high school.  As she spent the day preparing for this most memorable event in her life, I kept wondering to myself “What happened to my little girl?  When did she go from playing dress up to the real deal?”  Just yesterday she was donning Disney Princess attire and badly sequenced accessories, and then today she’s a young woman who could rival a real-life princess.  Time flies.  It makes me feel old, and yet I wouldn’t turn back the hands of time for anything in the world if it meant missing this milestone in my daughter’s life.

When I think back to the sequence of events that led up to this year’s prom, I have to laugh.  I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point along the line a simple “Will you go to Prom with me?” was no longer an acceptable invitation.  These days girls are expecting the invitation to be special and memorable.  I remember standing in the formal-wear store talking to an old childhood friend of my daughter’s and her mother, and we were discussing how the other girl had been asked to Prom.  Apparently her Prom date had taken her to dinner and surprised her with a bouquet of roses with a note in the center that read “PROM?”

Another young woman from a competing high school was asked to Prom by a ginormous sign hanging on the bridge of an overpass on our major highway through town.  It was impossible to  miss.  The sign was 16 feet across by 5 feet high.  I can’t begin to imagine how much help the young man needed to make – not to mention hang – that sign!

Even the annual Homecoming Dance requires forethought.  Girls have come to expect a bit of surprise and romance in the invitations.  As one girl told me, “If a guy asks me to Homecoming or Prom and just says ‘Would you like to go with me?’ he better plan on asking again in a more creative way.”  Of course, if you’re going to ask in a creative way, it’s always helpful to spell correctly, as the boyfriend of my daughter’s good friend Jess learned this year.  Otherwise, the young woman might have difficulty understanding exactly what she’s being asked.

As you can see, all of these invitations are getting out of hand.  Back in my day (Dang!  That makes me feel so old!), a simple invitation was sufficient.  These days, the girls are holding out for something more.  The competition is fierce, and the boys are feeling the pressure.

All of this brings me to my daughter’s boyfriend, Cory.  Back in January or February, Cory told Amber that she should start shopping for a Prom dress, as it was his intention to ask her to Prom.  Poor kid!  I should’ve warned him then what he was in for.

Cory is a great kid.  He’s tall and handsome and communicates well.  He’s smart, polite and extremely good to my daughter.  But he’s…well…shy.  That is to say that he’s not real comfortable with large public displays.  The pressure to come up with a unique way of asking Amber to Prom was almost too much for him.  And, though I felt for him, I couldn’t resist joining the bandwagon as it began its systematic process of friendly teasing about whether he was really taking Amber to Prom.

“You better hurry up and ask me or someone else may ask me first,” Amber said to him one day.

Cory was not amused.

On another occasion – and much to Amber’s dismay – I gently teased him saying, “Cory, it’s okay if you don’t want to take Amber to Prom.  She has her dress but it has a lace-up back and will fit her just as well next year if she ends up not going this year.”

“No!  I’m going to take her!” he assured me.

And on yet another occasion, Troy ribbed Amber a little bit by saying “It’s okay if Cory doesn’t ask you, Amber.  I’ll be your date for Prom.”

Now Amber was not amused.

As the date for Prom continued to draw near, Amber knew she was going but she hadn’t officially been asked.  That is to say that Cory had said “We’re going to Prom and you’re my date,” but he hadn’t asked in such a way that she’d be proud to journal it in her diary.  And all of this left me with great sympathy for Cory!  Why so much pressure?  What is it with girls these days that they have to be asked so “uniquely”?

Finally, at about nine days before the big event, Cory made his move!  Dressed beautifully in a dress shirt and tie, he surprised Amber after her Varsity Bells practice at church.  With his friend, Marc, Cory had pasted a gazillion Hershey Kisses on a poster board spelling out “PROM?”  He had done it!  It was official!  Amber was “officially ” going to Prom!  Nice job, Cory!

The rest of the story is for scrapbooks.  Prom night came, and the girls spent the entire day getting prepared:  hair, makeup, nails, toenails, teeth whitener, eyebrows plucked, legs shaved, body moisturized…  The boys took a shower and threw on their tuxes 15 minutes before walking out the door.  They all looked glamorous.

All of this build-up for an event like Prom makes me seriously concerned about the future.  How in the world can some of these boys meet the expectations of marriage proposals when the bar for Prom – a much less significant event – is so high?  I’d tell you to stay tuned, but Amber has been warned that she’s not allowed to get married until she’s 40, and there are to be no grandchildren for me until she’s 50.

Prom 2012