I must be getting old
My wife occasionally laughs at me when I say that. Sometimes she just grumbles. Hey, she is older than me. At any rate, there are times when I see or hear something that makes the gap between my adolescent youth and the here and now all the wider.
Last weekend, I took my wife out to dinner for Mother’s Day. Since we were certain it would be next to impossible to find a place on Sunday night, we went on Saturday for an early dinner at a Japanese place she loves. We wrangled one of our nieces to watch our little hellion and set out to enjoy ourselves.
Something we didn’t realize right away. In some places, Mother’s Day weekend is also Prom weekend.
As it was this past Saturday night. I think we both witnessed three large groups of kids come and go for dinner on their way to the event. Now let me tell you this, I don’t think we could have had any more entertainment had we decided to pay for a show. Before the night was even half over I leaned over to her and told her that I felt a blog post coming on.
I think somewhere along the way, people (kids and parents alike) have forgotten what the general intention of the prom truly is. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I always understood it to be something of a rite of passage, a way of presenting yourself as a soon-to-be-minted adult, as opposed to a mere child. Keeping with the spirit of that notion, the dress code should be reasonably straightforward.
Either people have forgotten this little fact, or else they have just lost their minds.
First things first: Ladies? Your goal at the prom should be to look elegant, beautiful and (if at all possible) sophisticated. Wearing a dress that screams “jump me” isn’t the best way to go about this. I saw things that ranged from what looked like a cocktail waitress at a strip club to what could arguably be a street walker in the red-light district.
Being a “clueless man”, it’s probably best that I leave the critiques of the ladies wear to my wife. However, for all the grief I could give those girls, the guys made me want to grab a stick and beat them with it.
Guys, your role for the prom is pretty simple: look distinguished. It’s time to leave behind the little boys clothing and present yourself as a man.
Here’s a few tips:
- When you rent a tuxedo, get one that fits. The baggy, over-sized look just doesn’t belong anywhere in the vicinity of formal wear.
- Next, leave the goddamned baseball caps at the house. I kid you not, I saw no fewer than four guys sporting baseball caps (some turned backwards) with their tuxedo’s.
- When you walk, the slouchy saunter just looks stupid as hell. I promise you that no adult is going to take you seriously if you walk up to them that way.
This is such a simple concept that it should not even require mentioning, but for the benefit of the ignorant: Your role is to present yourself as a man, not a thug.
Maybe I am getting old, but nothing like any of this was present at my Prom. Even some of the guys I went to school with who might have been inclined to dress that way, opted for a more conservative look (and believe me they were more “street” than some of these fools my wife and I saw). I even went back and looked at my prom pictures at the tux I had rented and the dress my date wore. Nothing in either one could be in any way compared to what I saw last Saturday night.
Needless to say, both my wife and I repeated many times that our daughter will not wear anything like some of the dresses we saw. If her date arrives to pick her up looking like some of these fools, we’re gonna find out just how “street” he is by how well he can dodge bullets.
Comments
One Response to “ I must be getting old ”
Leave a Reply
-
My Other Sites
-
At times such as this I have to check my own hands for liver spots, and yet I don’t think being curmudgeonly is necessarily a result of being old. I know some kids dress elegantly and treat prom like a serious formal event. Well, at least until they hit the dance floor. The fact that those kids seem increasingly to be in the minority is what’s frightening.