Da Probm

(That's my mom's impersonation of how some of the - shall we say, more backwoodsy girls from where she lived pronounced it. "I'm goin' to Da Probm!")

I happened to be a bit late leaving the house this morning - normally I'm over here and at my desk by 7, but I had some bills I wanted to get paid and out, so as I was writing them, the local news I had on switched over to one of those morning shows (I think it was CBS.)

The morning network shows - like the current incarnation of "Today" and such - make my head want to explode. They set themselves up as SO IMPORTANT. They do Very Special Stories on things (like "the rising rates of autism....what does it mean?") and then follow it up with some kind of super-idiotic fluff piece. Or they barely scratch the surface of some story that might be important if it was actually, you know, investigated, and then it's "And next - see what's hot in shoes for spring!"

Well, today, they doing a series on Reliving Their Proms.

Flippin' heck? Reliving your prom? Who does that?

(Wait, wait - don't tell me: "People whose lives peaked in high school.")

Anyway, apparently the anchors (and when I think of Today I think of Brokaw and Pauley; that's how long it's been since I actually watched the thing. I don't know who's running the show now) are reliving their proms.

Except, instead of doing like any other person in this country and sitting around and TALKING about what happened at Prom, they are having the extra-special Rich Kid Birthday Party version of it - one guy got to play baseball with some members of some national baseball team the year he went to Prom (yeah, that's real prom-my), one guy got to dance with the stars of A Chorus Line (I am withholding ALL the horrible un-PC jokes I could make about that), and one woman - and I actually looked up for this, because it said she went to prom in 1987, which would have been the Prom Year for me - got "made over" to look like she did at Prom.

In an eye-searingly electric blue dress and that horrible spiral-perm hair girls used to get.

Now, yeah - I know, I'm being cynical here. But I do think this kind of thing merits a bit of ridicule - they call themselves a "news" show and they are playing "dress up like we did when we were 18." And they're trying to be the Voice of the People and yet they are "reminiscing" in ways that the average person wouldn't be able to afford, if they even COULD get their foot in the door to talk to the people from A Chorus Line or somesuch.

And I'm probably a bit cynical as I didn't go to my own prom. I really had no interest. I wasn't "going with" anyone at that time, and the one guy I would have been interested in asking, by the time I had screwed up enough courage to consider going to ask him myself, I heard the gossip..."Did you hear that Mimi asked Jay to the prom?"

As for going alone - which would have been an option - I didn't want to. For three reasons:

1. I couldn't see paying that kind of money to go alone (And I think they also had a sort of "single supplement" charge, where you paid more to go stag than you would as half of a couple. Which is unfair, but then life is unfair.)

2. Of my two best friends, one had recently been dumped and was very anti-prom, and the other was going with a male friend from another school - and going to HIS prom. So I wouldn't even have had the two most important members of my team to back me up and to joke about the horrible dresses the popular girls were wearing.

3. I figured it looked less pathetic to stay home than to go to the prom by myself. I was very self-conscious in those days.

Honestly? I probably would not have enjoyed myself. I don't like the "music of my generation" (probably a lot of INXS and Depeche Mode got played at that prom - as I remember, they had a DJ instead of a band). I don't like crowds, especially when there are people I sense as being hostile to me in that crowd (i.e., the popular kids). I'm sure a lot of drinking went on both before and after the prom, and I wasn't into that. (Nor was I into the groping and feeling that probably took place, even DURING prom.)

But it does kind of baffle me, someone wanting to relive their prom 20 years or more from the time it happened.

Am I just being churlish, or does it seem that someone who's all down with the heavy-duty reliving (and I don't mean just reminiscing about "remember how we thought Tom and Andrea were going to love each other forever?" or "Do you remember how Max tripped and fell into the punchbowl) is someone whose life hasn't had anything really very INTERESTING happen since they were 18?

I mean, if I were into reliving a part of my life, it would be other parts of it. Like successfully defending my dissertation. Or getting the phone call to let me know I had a job. Or the time period right after I found out I had tenure. Or even just sitting around the lab in graduate school with my lab-mates, shooting the s*** until our adviser came in and told us we needed to get back to work. But high school? Something I'm just as glad is behind me.