My First Male Prom Date

I've been to prom before - three proms, actually. I went to my junior and senior proms, and then went back up to the city where I lived before in Michigan as a senior and did their senior prom, too. In all three of these situations I went with a date, but unfortunately for my high school social life, they were just female friends who paired up with me so we could get the ticket discount. So this was my first prom in which I had a date. Isn't he cute?


The theme of the FIS prom was "Celestial," hence the moon and stars overhead here:

The tables were decorated with star ornaments and cookie cutters. There were cards scattered with pictures of Venus, the Solar System, etc. Justin and I invented a game like War in which you played these cards and won based on whose card had the greatest probability of life - as in, Mars defeats Mercury. If you had a tie (say, Space and Earth, or the Astronaut and E.T.,both at 100) you kept playing until somebody won. If you play Saturn or Jupiter, you get to count the moons. I still think Justin shortchanged Venus. He is so carbon-normative. Give sulfur-based life forms a chance!

Edited to add: Coworker Katherine took this picture of our card game, just in case you thought we couldn't possibly REALLY be nerdy enough to play it. If there is one thing you can learn from this blog, it is never to bet against how nerdy Justin and I can be.

We also had glowsticks. I made a bracelet, then a hat, then a belt, then a belt with a dangly bit, and then a bandolier. Think of me as a four-year-old with marginally better motor skills.

Coworkers Sarah and Tim helped with photography, and these are their pictures above. Their camera suffered a tragic hairline fracture on their trip to Vietnam when the lens got sideswiped by a motorcycle (which, on the other hand, is probably one of the better cocktail party stories about camera problems. Much better than ours, anyway, which involved the zoom lens breaking because Justin kept accidentally turning the camera on while it was in his pocket.) This is me demonstrating genuine, commiseratory sorrow at their loss. Also being the Monopoly Man.

Like two of the U.S. proms I went to, there was a dinner first. Unlike the proms I went to, there was very little dancing and it was over at 10. Think of it more as a senior banquet with a bit of dancing at the end. We had slide shows of senior photos, a great video of friends and former teachers around the world, and musical performances by some juniors. We all got emotional, and the tenth graders took advantage of this to eat all the dessert.

The evening was just fantastic, thanks to the yeoman's work of coworker Robert, the junior class advisor, who has been fundraising and organizing for months. I think the only bad part of prom for all of us was that this means Robert won't be forced to cook giant pots of chili to sell at lunch anymore. Unless he needs spare cash. I'm not above a little burglary to try to make this happen.