As Buffy the Vampire Slayer made so abundantly clear, high school is hell, so it’s weird in a way that any of us should remember those four long years of our lives with any kind of affection; and yet, somehow, many of us do.
The tedious hours spent slogging through Trigonometry class or the many moments of sheer terror as yet another young hoodlum cornered you outside in the smoking area are forgotten and only the good stuff remains, like reading Mao Tse-Tung in Political Philosophy class or making out with your new crush in the back seat of the bus on the way home from a Friday night Ski Club ski trip.
And, of course, the same goes for Prom, which, with each passing year, grows slightly more golden in memory, so that, after a decade or two (or in my case, four), the event assumes a place in our consciousness reserved for the most pleasant of remembrances: our first sexual encounter, first skinny dip, first blackout drunk—(all of which, coincidentally, may have happened at Prom.)
Fortunately, this process of revisionist personal history is accelerated by events that color the past with a much-improved present.
So, for instance, instead of being stuck with the recollection of driving your family’s Ford Maverick to the Central Catholic High School gym, you can substitute the memory of sixty spiffily-dressed cyclists pedaling crosstown under pink and blue skies to a lakeside shelter where much gabbing, shimmying, and quaffing takes place. You get to paint over awkward fumblings to Doobie Brothers’ songs with an entire concrete dance floor getting low to Lil’ Jon. And painful reminiscences of conversations about home room and summer jobs are subsumed by mental pictures of circling the Jenga fire and engaging in discourse on aesthetics, technology, and the meaning of life, (as well as where to find another beer.)
And happily, all is well that ended well—at least that’s how I’ll remember it now.
The tedious hours spent slogging through Trigonometry class or the many moments of sheer terror as yet another young hoodlum cornered you outside in the smoking area are forgotten and only the good stuff remains, like reading Mao Tse-Tung in Political Philosophy class or making out with your new crush in the back seat of the bus on the way home from a Friday night Ski Club ski trip.
And, of course, the same goes for Prom, which, with each passing year, grows slightly more golden in memory, so that, after a decade or two (or in my case, four), the event assumes a place in our consciousness reserved for the most pleasant of remembrances: our first sexual encounter, first skinny dip, first blackout drunk—(all of which, coincidentally, may have happened at Prom.)
Fortunately, this process of revisionist personal history is accelerated by events that color the past with a much-improved present.
So, for instance, instead of being stuck with the recollection of driving your family’s Ford Maverick to the Central Catholic High School gym, you can substitute the memory of sixty spiffily-dressed cyclists pedaling crosstown under pink and blue skies to a lakeside shelter where much gabbing, shimmying, and quaffing takes place. You get to paint over awkward fumblings to Doobie Brothers’ songs with an entire concrete dance floor getting low to Lil’ Jon. And painful reminiscences of conversations about home room and summer jobs are subsumed by mental pictures of circling the Jenga fire and engaging in discourse on aesthetics, technology, and the meaning of life, (as well as where to find another beer.)
And happily, all is well that ended well—at least that’s how I’ll remember it now.
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