Promenade with your partner

The origin of the prom is in an old fashioned promenade, a leisurely stroll around the parlour where you show off your partner to the assembled nobility. I'm not sure if they still do it but when I went to the Kirov Ballet in 1977, between acts everyone would promenade. They had a big long room with no purpose other than for walking around the perimeter (there was a carpet ringing the room), which is what the entire audience did. It was quite charming actually.

Now, of course, proms have taken on an exaggerated importance because people just don't hold balls the way they used to in all those Jane Austen books. Plus, now as part of the Global War on Fun (TM), everything about proms is tightly controlled. Nobody can arrive late or leave early. In some cases the students are detained afterwards for a mandatory group activity until early the next morning. This means that if anyone is intent on getting a buzz or some nookie, they'll need to be very surreptitious and creative. I have no suggestions to make in this regard, but I'm guessing today's youth is up to the challenge.

Tonight we had one of the Junior Pre-Proms for my daughter's school here. As I noted to one of the parents, this was the most kids we'd ever had at the house when we were home and aware that there were kids there (so sorry, no beer pong this time).

The scene was really quite entertaining. There were about a dozen couples and then one or more parent for each of them, armed with one or more cameras apiece. I can't even guess how many pictures were taken all told. I brought out a stool so that the shorter people could see what was going on. And the scene was happily chaotic, so much so that our dog, who's a herder and usually actively involved with whatever is going on, finally gave up and lay down under the dining room table.

Fortunately, there were no mishaps. One girl caught a heel on her dress on the stairs but fortunately just fell onto the half-landing. Nobody spilled anything on themselves or had a hair mishap. Nobody got stuck with a corsage or boutonniere pin. We overbought food but there were enough boys there to use most of it up.

My daughter, who had been fretting about her hair for weeks, got a wonderful up-do that she loved. Her date was a very nice young man with hearty handshake. He's one of those guys who shakes your hand by swinging his arm around and slapping his hand into yours. It's very pre-professional (the girls referred to it as being a CEO handshake). I was just wondering where a kid learns to do that. I couldn't find lessons on Youtube anywhere.

After a half hour of groups forming dissolving and reassembling, they all at once decided it was time to leave, and off they went. I stayed at home to clean up, of which my favorite part was finding empty corsage and boutonniere boxes in every conceivable place. Two were under the couch, one was behind the TV. The rest were stashed on every available horizontal surface. But within an hour the house was back to normal and it was time to go pick them up.