PlazaJen: Passion Knit

It's Prom Season, and today's paper had a whole feature on some teenage girls buying their prom dresses, and how one just HAD to splurge and spend $258 on THE dress. It got me thinking about my proms, and how my junior year prom subsisted of me in a borrowed, ill-fitting mauve satin number, and a bunch of "us girls" went together. I still have resentments towards my mother for making me borrow a dress, though she made up for it the following year. Senior year, I had a boyfriend, a real-live boyfriend, and a pale blue cocktail dress that had georgette layers on the bottom. My mother's rationalization for letting me get that dress was that I could wear it again. Uh, yeah. For all those cocktail parties I attended in college - mm hmm! Nothing says dorm party like wearing pale blue georgette and pounding shots of rum. Anyway, I barely got to go to prom that year because I had a raging fever and quite honestly, I hardly remember either of the events - dancing, food, it's just a blur.

But what I do remember is my junior year, day of the prom. The juniors put the prom on for the seniors. As class president, I got to basically steer the whole damn thing just how I wanted it to be. A party planner at an early age, I was, and still enjoy it - party planning, and being a control freak. So we had the theme, because you HAD to have a theme, based on a song, and ours was "We're in Heaven", by Bryan Adams. I spent hours looking through the big giant catalogs for things we could actually afford for decorations. We ended up doing silver & blue for the colors, and (also, crafty at an early age), we taped silver glittery stars together to form a triangle, with this white floaty cloud-like stuff coming out of the center. We had to build those at the country club, and of course, there was oodles of crepe paper and balloons, and all your standard prom crap. We had a rag-tag team of people bustling to get this party set up, and then still get home in time to PREPARE. However, one of the helpers was Peggy, you might recall her name from the Snow Queen post. Destined to be the next year's Homecoming Queen, deemed the prettiest girl in our class, etc., etc., she was pitching in (before her own elaborate prom preparations) to help get the decorations up. She decided to stop doing crepe paper and help with the stars/cloud puffs. Within minutes, she was oooing and ahhhing over how soft the cloud puff stuff was. I can still see her, late afternoon sunlight streaming in, as she said, "This stuff is SO SOFT!" and she rubbed it up and down her bare arms.

Ah, yes, the joy of products made from FIBERGLASS. Oh, did I say fiberglass?

FIBERGLASS.

Yes. Yes it was. Our cloud puffin' stuffin' was essentially a very fine grade of fiberglass. I just stood there and watched her do it, & didn't say a WORD. Because I may not have ever been in the running for prettiest girl at school? But I was one of the smart ones. And, apparently, one of the bitchy ones. After all, her date was a senior. Why not have some irritated skin for your big prom night?

Within ten minutes she had bumps everywhere she'd rubbed the fiberglass, including HER FACE. And she commenced with the freaking out.

I'm so going to hell, because it still makes me laugh.