Saturday, June 21, 2008

Prom

I promised myself that I wouldn't drink ANY booze before or during the Pride Prom, and it's a promise I managed to keep.

Alcohol certainly gets me out of my shell, however, so I spent most of the night hiding in our change room, which was the handicapped anteroom to the women's bathroom: well-lit, yes, but with small 45-degree mirrors on the ceiling and a constant bass-booming soundtrack (the doorway being next to the speakers). Young girls in formalwear filed past us as we unhappily revealed our most intimate secrets.

This change room was the only really awkward part of the night.

A SUPER nice crowd. Now I understand why adults call teenagers "cute," while I simultaneously understand why the teenagers hate it. Miss Drew was the expected high-energy professional, organizing the king/queen pageant at the last minute and delegating responsibilities to Noir and I. Noir, being the runner and makeup person, was wearing the most amazing belt of brushes I have ever seen.

The pageant was good natured. I'm not sure how these students knew each other -- one said most of them were from "The Hill," which might have meant "Forest Hill" -- but they certainly had their favourites in the contest. Drew sprung a Q&A session on them, perhaps to even out the fact that three of the contestants looked SO uber-polished. "Johnny Depp," quiet, shy, ingenious, won the King contest, and "Sexy Lexy" narrowly beat out "Cheryl Alyssa" as the queen.

Most amazing was the confidence of these people; when asked serious questions they had instant, self-assured responses, even though they had absolutely no time to prepare. I didn't have HALF that confidence in school. Heck, I STILL don't.

I did, however, find the whole situation a little nerve-wracking...but I almost ALWAYS find these things nerve-wracking, so that's no surprise. Having not learned my lesson, I once again attempted fledgeling crowd interaction, stumbling down the auditorium steps and making a beeline to the first person I saw in order to...what? Once I reached that person I realized I didn't know WHAT THE HECK I WAS DOING. So I did the first thing that came to mind, sort of a full-contact shimmy that I hope to God didn't come across as sexual.

BONUS FUN: It was up to me to get directions to the Country Hill Community Centre and I was the "lead car" in our two-car caravan. I was very proud of myself when we arrived in the parking lot, having made no false turns and hitting no pedestrians.

We marched into the centre, dragging our suitcases. Miss Drew was dressed in a sort of rainbow bikini and hooker heels. A middle-aged lady ran up to us and screamed "You're in the wrong place!" We laughed, thinking she was kidding, but then we looked around and saw all these REALLY young kids staring at us in shock and surprise.

We were at the wrong community centre. We had crashed a 14-year-old boy's birthday party.

4 comments:

Kimber said...

!!!! Why, oh why wasn't I there to witness all the fun? The shimmy, the brush-belt, and, most importantly, the look of horror on that woman's face when you turned up at the birthday party. Oh, thanks for making me laugh out loud yet again Muffy.

Adam Thornton said...

You're welcome! We laughed for hours later too...that poor mortified mother!

tanzi said...

THat is sooooo funny that you went to the wrong place!!! HA! I think it's good: kids that age need that kind of exposure.
The prom sounds amazing. I know what you mean when you say some teens today are far more together than we were--I feel like that a lot.

Adam Thornton said...

Oh yes, I'm sure you can relate!

At the same time, whenever I meet a teen we just stand there staring at each other; I don't know what THEY'RE thinking -- probably "this person must think I'm a real baby" -- but I know that I'm trying to come up with appropriate non-personal things to talk about that bridge the generation gap.