Prom "Potential"

Prom is over and done with, and now it's nothing more than a twinkle in my eye. (Speaking of which, my daughter had a little twinkle in her eye when she came home from the prom. Ummhmmm.) (Her hair still had a little twinkle to it too. In fact it looked prettier than when she walked out the door.) (Thanks Bobbi!) (It looked pretty the next morning too.) (And so did her make-up.)

(It's amazing how long you can stretch prom out if you want to.)

But Prom is over and done with, and it's on to the next topic . . .

Nah . . . let's keep talking about prom.

You guys wanna see the dress we ordered from China that hasn't arrived yet?

So while I was telling my daughter all of my prom dress nightmare stories from my own high school years, we had an epiphany together. One of them AH-HA moment thingies. Well, actually I had the epiphany. She just prompted the epiphany. After she declared, "I can't believe you ever got asked out at all, Mom!"

As the words fell from her mouth it dawned on me the reason my hub always says "because you had potential" whenever I ask him why he fell in lub with me. I think maybe I was never quite finished.

In other words, I was a little rag-a-muffin.

When your dad up and dies, leaving your mom to raise seven kids all by her loneliness, you gotsta get creative when it comes to dressing yourself for prom.

Besides, in my day there was no such thing as a pretty prom dress. We cut holes in garbage bags and promenaded up hill in the snow both ways.

And we liked it!

And anyway, so what if I had to treat my chronic allergies and cold sores with home remedies! That's right, I went around town with Kleenex stuffed up my nose and deodorant smeared across my lips. What of it!?

But fer reals, my dresses were never quite finished when my prom date arrived. I always had a roll of tape, a bag of safety pins, and a stick a butter in my purse, in case of a wardrobe malfunction.

But the worst dress story of all is the year I got asked to the Senior Dinner Dance by a preppy, rich boy. He was in my foods class and we once made a hamburger cake together for the class cake decorating contest--with real lettuce, cheese and tomatoes. Hee hee. I bet Cake Boss never thought of that. We thought it was stinkin' heelarious, but our teacher never cracked a smile.

He was an older boy, who also asked me to my Junior Prom, but instead of taking me to the dance he took me to his house to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

That was pretty much our last date. And I never kissed him neither.

But it wouldn't have worked out between us anyway, because he had a very strong aversion to Lionel Richie.

So when he took me to the prom I borrowed one of my cousin's bridesmaid dresses. She shipped it all the way from San Diego and it arrived like two hours before the dance.

EEEEEEK! I'm pretty sure I added the hat. (My daughter thinks I looked like Little Bo Peep.)

But his Senior Dinner Dance was way way worse. I was still out shopping for the dress when he arrived to pick me up!

As I recall, cash was very short that month. My mom had a beauty salon in our house so that Saturday I was frantically waiting for her to finish a perm so she could slip me some cash. There was no car either so I actually had to RUN the five blocks from the ghetto to down town Provo. My choices were JCPenny or Lerners. I picked Lerners, due to proximity, where I grabbed the best dress I could find before running all the way back home, huffing and puffing. My date was sitting in my driveway waiting upon my arrival.

Awkward.

I'll never forget his mom's face when she laid eyes upon me in my plain, cotton, Lerners dress.

Hee hee

Okay, you wanna see me and my hub before we were hub and wife? My hub also took me to my Senior Dinner Dance and Prom. (The next year.) (Only I did kiss him.) (Enthusiastically.)

Oh dear, I made this dress and it was completely duct taped together. I kid not.

I have no earthly idea where I got this dress. Probably from the drama dept. But YES, I spray glued ALL that lace to it to glam it up. (I figured since he gave to me his leather, I should give to him my lace.) 

Are you guys too young for Stevie Nicks? 

Anyways, my daughter got a HUGE, GIGANTIC, deep belly laugh over these dresses, but besides all the duct tape and spray glue I guess I kinda did have potential.