Prom

photo by lizlemon

Time so sweetens memories that most of us, ten years afterwards, will recall an event that featured torn streamers, deflating mylar balloons, and an impoverished sound system puttering away in a shadowy high school gymnasium with the fondness reserved for Broadway extravaganzas designed by Hollywood musical directors especially for one’s own personal enjoyment,; so imagine how warmly we will regard a truly delightful evening a decade hence.

Think of how sweet it will be to look back in a tenth of a century on a perfect summer night where pink clouds are smudged across the horizon above a smooth disc of water in a park in which honey locusts glow golden before the setting sun and you get to amuse yourself by cozying up under a banner celebrating a dance that begins on two wheels and makes its way, by twists and turns, through familiar streets made satisfyingly unfamiliar by the assembled multitude, the shared frivolity, and the ongoing promise of unexpected expectations and unanticipated anticipations.

Plus, consider the stories you’d have to tell at your own high school graduation if you had a dad who rode you across the high freeway bridge on a trail-a-bike; if that isn’t at least as memorable dry-humping in the backseat of your father’s Oldsmobile, the forgetfulness is coming early.

The most memorable proms typically feature some heinous event: think of the final scene of Stephen King’s Carrie, or they way it unfolds in untold film comedies like Mean Girls or It’s a Wonderful Life.

For me, though, being able to get all Footloose is what it’s really all about; the opportunity to kick off my Sunday shoes and savor the fewer than seven degrees of separation connecting me to Kevin Bacon and the world-at-large means that the desired level of losing the blues has been achieved.

I could have stayed at the dance a little longer, but I already had enough to remember and already, happily, a bit to forget.