The senior prom.
OK, OK, I wasn't actually at the senior prom, but I didn't really have a choice whether or not I'd share in all the vicarious thrills & chills.
Spouse, an experienced emergency-planning and disaster-recovery officer who can read a calendar and is no fool, somehow chose the prom weekend to be the middle of her shipmate's shopping vacation. In spouse's defense, a couple months ago she did provide parental support for the girlie stuff like dress shopping, shoe selection, and a couple of other topics which are so TMI that even I wish I didn't know why they're TMI. However she did that stuff with our kid because she enjoys doing it, not from feelings of absentee guilt or because she wished to help me avoid pain or guy incompetence. It would be like me preparing for deployment separation by taking our kid surfing every day.
Spouse also missed out on the pre-prom drama, the prom drama, and the after-prom drama.
I'll start with the LBYM aspect of the prom. There is no LBYM aspect to a prom... there's only "how far above your means you are living while you are getting ready to go to the prom." In this case the damage could have been a lot worse.
Prom ticket: $0 for her, $75 for us parents. (We got off cheap, too!)
Dress: $30. (Ross Dress For Less. For you guys, apparently this amount of money for a clothing article is considered to be stupendously cheap. Go figure.)
Hair: $40. (Guys: refer to my previous parenthetical commentary.)
Nails: $40. (Guys: makes sense to us. Acrylics are synthetic and tougher and last longer, so of course you're going to spend more money on bigger and more powerful tools. Post-prom, they make great slot-head screwdrivers, too.)
Makeup: $40. (Guys-- back to the first comment.)
Shoes: Free. Already had 'em from another "mandatory footwear" occasion.
Limo: Free. Another parent has a cousin in the business.
It never in my life would have occurred to me to utter the sentence "And that makeup price is a good deal, too, because it includes the false eyelashes!", let alone assess a financial transaction as "good" because it includes more fake stuff.
Our kid was actually stressing out more over the preps than the event, because she is about as far from a girlie-girl as you can get. Under normal circumstances if you offered her a free manicure or a free bucket of used surfboard wax, she'd be the first one out on the waves. She owns zero skirts and only two dresses, both of which are suitable only for proms (or bridesmaids), but she owns approximately three dozen pairs of surf shorts. (I'm so proud of her.) [-]She didn't listen to her mother[/-] It never occurred to her that she'd need appointments for hair, nails, & makeup, so the day before the prom she found herself struggling to schedule this tech-support team alongside approximately 20,000 other stressed-out teens. (The girlie-girls made this year's prom-prep appointments the day after last year's prom.) She had no idea what she was getting into, either, but she suspected that the Macy's makeup counter was probably going to attempt to upsell her. She was also very concerned about buyer's remorse.
So as the prom approached she shared all of these concerns with me-- repetitively and at length. (For some reason spouse's phone kept going to voicemail.) I tried to help out by explaining to her that the prom is a tough time for guys, too. For example we actually have to find a rental tux that goes well with dress sneakers. Then there's the whole issue of whether to shower or shave-- surely there's not enough pre-prom time to be expected to do both. Next there's the whole debate about deodorant & cologne. But my topic tactics pretty much guaranteed that there was not going to be any discussion about sexual activities.
We decided that it's her money and her choices, it's her choice what to do with her body (makeup and otherwise), and if she doesn't perceive value then it's not worth spending the money. Then we got into the whole "What if..." discussion and decided that these types of experiments are best done for fun (and for absolutely no reason) instead of for an evening when it all has to work out perfectly or everything is "ruined". She finally decided that she might as well experience this stuff now rather than later, if for no other reason than to entertain her girlie-girl friends. The hairdresser turned out to have a makeup guy on staff (oddly enough, he was indeed a guy) so she didn't have to deal with Macy's sales pressure. And one of those friends offered to pay half for the cost of the manicure, so that tipped the deal. Apparently seeing our kid sportin' acrylic nails is considered an attraction worth paying money for, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
The prom itself was anti-climactic. A wonderful time was had by everyone, and she was home by 11:15. (For some reason the planned post-prom co-ed sleepover had difficulty finding a venue.) The biggest drama was the couple who broke up last month (a month after they bought their non-refundable prom tix) but who decided to "get back together for one more try" at the prom. Didn't work out. Explosively. With many many cell-phone photos on 500 Facebook pages.
Thank goodness the prom drama & angst is behind us for good. Now all that's left is three AP exams and a graduation party. And after that we're all done with the parenting stuff, right?
Eight more days until spouse gets home. At least that's what she claims...
On a bike ride, I passed a girl on a bicycle, and saw that she was texting.
"LOL, lk ma no hnds!!"
followed shortly thereafter by:
"OMG!!!!!!!!"
and then still later by:
"911
"
