California school cracks down on 'prom draft'

[tblue37]

48. In our liberal college town island in a very red state (KS), the

high school prom (and other dances, including the Winter Formal) are just fun--for everyone, whether he ir she has a "date" or not. Many, even those with boyfriends or girlfriends, go with a group rather than as part of a couple.

My lovely daughter attended her prom with a bunch of her female friends, despite having received several date offers. Instead of hurting any boy's feelings, she went with her female friends and danced with all of the boys who asked her to. She had a blast, as did everyone else.

My son attended with 5 (yes, FIVE!) of his female friends, including one he had occasionally dated but had not gone out with at all since junior year, though he did hang out with her as a friend, just as he hung out with many other young women as friends. They all had a blast, too.

Our 2 high schools' proms are held together in the ballroom of the Kansas University Union building. They also do something that struck me as bizarre at the time, but which I look back on fondly now as a sweet, precious memory of my kids' youth, now that they are 32 and 34. Parents here are allowed to stand at the railings of the wide corridor that surrounds the ballroom and observe the prom from above!

I actually did that, along with my best friend. We stood there for about 2 1/2 to 3 hours during each of my kids' proms, watching not just my kids, but all of those kids having fun and looking so cute and proud all dressed up. Though they are "young adults" at that age, they are also still very young, very much kids, and getting all dressed up in fancy clothes and celebrating together at the end of their childhood and K-12 school career is a major rite of passage, and most are creating precious memories for future years.

When my friend and I decided to go to observe the prom, we did it as a lark, just because we found the idea so weird yet interesting. We also went partly to observe the other parents who were observing. We both have an anthropological fascination with human behavior and with how cultural features manifest themselves, so we intended our time there as something of a field trip "among the natives"--not to mock anything, but because the idea of parents standing above the prom as observers was something neither of us had ever heard of, and we were fascinated by how it would work in the real world.

I was astonished, though, to find myself wholly involved in observing the prom, not as an objective observer of human behavior or cultural patterns, but as a *parent* enjoying the sight of all those dear children (not just my own, but all of them--I *like* kids; I always have--good thing, since I teach undergrads!). My friend, who was only a few years older than the prom-goers at the time, also found the whole scene surprisingly charming and sweet.

I must admit, one if my favorite pics is the prom pic of my extremely handsome son, all dressed up with 4 of his 5 "dates," all of whom look absolutely adorable in their widely varied prom formals. He wasn't able to corral the fifth girl in time for the pic, since she was dancing with someone at the time, and the line for pictures was too long to risk losing their place to go looking for her when their turn came. She got a solo pic with another of her male friends, plus a copy if the "Michael + 4" pic for herself, though, so she didn't completely miss out on the picture fun.

One of his girl friends was quite chubby. In a traditional prom dating set up, she might well have been left at home in tears, instead of being part of a group that attracted a lot of attention and admiration from her peers at prom. She was just as cute as the other 4 girls, but often an overweight girl does not get asked to dances in high school, and certainly not usually by one of the boys considered especially cute and "dreamy," which my son always has been. But Michael is a Mama's boy (in a good way), so he has always really liked women and appreciated them as people, not just as "hubba-hubba" targets for his hormonal attentions.

In fact, one of the reasons he invited all of those girls to attend prom with him was to make sure that all of them would have someone to go with. He couldn't bear to think that any of his friends might be left out or feel awkward if she had no one to go to prom with. He is older than my daughter, so the practice of attending formals in groups rather than in couples was not as prominent during his high school years. (Hmmmm.....I wonder now whether his little stunt--i.e., showing up with 5 "dates"--might have had some influence on the fact that the practice was so common as to be entirely unremarkable by the time my daughter's prom came around.) Of course, a lot of kids do still go in couples, but there just is *no* awkwardness, no stigma at all if a person doesn't go to prom with a date.

Anyway, because our high schools' proms are not set up in a way that leads to exclusion of kids who can't get dates, that means *all* the kids can look forward to prom and have a great time when they get there. Oh, and BTW, many years ago a group of mothers got together to make sure a nice selection of loaner prom dresses in various styles and sizes would be available for any girl whose budget would not allow her to purchase an expensive formal for just one dance. Prom in our city is simply *not* a vehicle for embarrassing or excluding the kinds of kids who were so often ostracized in earlier times.