Some tomorrow.

BACK FROM PROM, FOLKS! I'm sure that you all expected me to stay there forever. But that's ridiculous. In reality, you'd have no reason to expect any such thing since I made no intention to make any such display. You didn't even know that I was at prom. I don't even know what you're talking about.

What can I say about prom? Well, I was there for a total of 7 hours and it was incredibly dull. I'm no dancing queen is the thing. One of them. I simply can't have a good time like that. And furthermore, these people have something to celebrate, a reason to be there, that they had made it through four years of high school and they're celebrating it with their friends. I have nothing to celebrate. I've squandered my time and I know it well, and the only thing left to do is to go out in blaze and fury out of spite. I could not take another year in what has been one of the most frustrating places of my life. I suppose I've simply had enough, I've met many wonderful people and had some good times, but I don't think that I ever had enough patience for something like this. Ideally my marks haven't dropped sufficiently to lose my chance at university, but I'm a nervous man and that's the sort of thing that worries me.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with prom! I am easily distracted, you see. It went something like this:
1. Get picked up by a friend's van.
2. Go to prom reception, occasionally talk to people that I know but mostly stand in a corner.
3. Cake!
4. More cake!
5. Sit around while everyone dances.
6. Go to sleep in a friend's basement.

Those are the six steps to success, I assume! Between a tuxedo rental, prom ticket and other incidental costs, I spent at least $200, maybe closer to $300. All for the greatest night of my life.
It's traditional for me that I'd never write about my personal experiences because not much interesting happens to me. I make up for it by talking. In my brief tenure as a bass choir singer (my voice is slightly too high for it, but my tenor is plainly awful), I discovered that I have an unusually loud voice to match my large size. I'm heard way above people, and at that, I usually have something interesting or funny to say (thanks to my great wit and modesty). But people don't talk at prom.

They dance.

And as I said, I am no dancer. I'm a big, clumsy guy, and I'm white, if that actually does make any difference (although that might be racially insensitive of me to say, I don't really know anymore). I am actually one of the biggest, clumsiest, whitest people I know. I was apparently born of some old European stock, heartily welcoming cold Canadian weather, I imagine that my ancestors were of the sort of bunch who would regularly do things such as pull the ploughs of many oxen, despite a surplus of oxen in the area, and they weren't extremely skilled at it, and they already had more convenient ways to pull a plough, and they already had developed an internal combustion engine, and besides the soil wasn't all that good for tilling anyway. But these hardy men persevered, often for low wages, because they needed the money, and people would pay it since they tired easily and they would become too weak and lethargic to run the local protection racket (I assume that there weren't many other uses for my stock in that time). And they didn't make good dancers, either, since they had hardly any time to practise dancing. They probably got by just doing power moves at heavy metal concerts, widely versed in the floor punch and the mosh pit. At least I assume so.

Things haven't changed much, and I can assure you that they played no heavy metal that night, so my floor punching talents were wasted. In the end, though, I'd like to say that I learned something, and I didn't. There goes $200, and for all my effort I'm still quite tired. I'm no man for ceremonies or superstition, nor symbolism. I see what's there and live it. I saw prom, I lived it, and the important thing is that I'm still alive.