It’s prom season and I’ve seen many a prom over my lifetime, first as a student myself and then as a teacher. Things have changed quite a bit since I was a young man in high school back in the Ford and Carter Administrations.
When I was a teenager, prom was for couples that were going to get married. The idea that one would go with someone who was not your significant other was absurd and unthinkable. The traditions at my suburban St. Paul, Minnesota high school were clear and sacrosanct. The prom was in mid-May (school let out in early June) and the boys asked the girls – always. No self-respecting male would go out with the brazen hussy who asked him first, although all of the fellows were dying to be relieved of the responsibility and possible rejection that came with being the asker instead of the asked.
Formal attire was a must, the guys donned tuxedoes and the girls dazzled in ball gowns reminiscent of Cinderella. That was your costume for the evening; no casual clothes, tennis shoes, or changing into more comfortable apparel after the Grand March because after all, this was the prom. At my school, the young men rented cars for the occasion. Some did so out of necessity, they didn’t have their own wheels with which to pick up their enchanting princess for the prom. Others, despite having their own vehicle, rented a “luxury” car in which they squired around their beautiful dates. The boys drove, with their hands at the “ten and two position” as Mr. Sell taught them in driver’s ed, for safety – driving and otherwise. The boys stole glances out the corners of their eyes at their date’s breasts, put on glorious display by a low cut dress, heaving with her every breath perhaps signaling invitation and certainly telegraphing temptation as she blithely chatted about mutual classmates and the upcoming evening’s festivities.
The prom was always at some swanky downtown hotel ballroom reeking of sophistication and oozing class. Couples boogied more dances than they sat out. There were no “groups”, maybe you shared your table with other prom goers but that night was about you and your date – no one else. The prom lasted until midnight and that’s when couples disappeared, no one left early. When the prom ended some went straight home, most stopped into an all night Bridgeman’s to have a malted and make the evening last, a few left for upstairs rooms rented earlier at the prom’s host hotel in order to get started on the honeymoon of their assumed future marriage.
I started teaching at Mitchell High School in 1982 and I never ever got used to the casual way prom was treated by MHS students. Because only juniors and seniors are allowed at MHS proms and because there is an upper age limit on attendees, lots of kids don’t go to prom with their significant other. When your true love is too young or too old to go to prom, the one eligible goes with a friend. My son did this when he was a senior. His girlfriend was in California at a science thing during prom so he went, at the request of some friends, with a senior girl who didn’t have a date. That was a nice thing to do but would have been blasphemy in my high school days.
Early in my career I chaperoned proms and all during my days at MHS I was the guy in charge of raising money for the event. The prom used to consist of decorating the MHS gym (later the Corn Palace) booking the music (in the 1980’s and 1990’s it was actual bands, later it was DJs and sound systems) a banquet (that ended by 1990 or so) and then, when the prom was over, off to the Starlite Drive-In for the dusk to dawn movie extravaganza (when the drive-in closed that’s when the after prom party got started). Over the course of my thirty-six years as co-chair fundraising I helped raise over three-quarters of a million dollars (gross) for those proms. My very last year at MHS, the Juniors didn’t raise enough money and rather than stint on the prom parents stepped up with fundraising. They also helped decorate and chaperone the prom that year as well.
Parents were aghast that 30-50% of the kids left immediately after they walked through the Grand March or perhaps after just one song. All that expense, planning and folderol just to be there for ten minutes! In my experience that was pretty typical behavior. The prom was supposed to last until midnight but more often than not we were packing things up shortly after ten o’clock because only the band, the teacher chaperones and those banging shutters and tumbleweed were all that was left at the prom.
I was constantly surprised at the number of “couples” who arrived separately to the prom. Some did that because the invitation to go to prom was made back in September and by April the prom “couple” was no longer one. Some young women chose to use their own transportation in order to preserve their virtue; they didn’t want to be dependent on a randy young man for transportation at the end of the night. I was also amazed by the number of couples who were together basically only to walk through the Grand March and then spent the rest of the night with peers of their same sex or with their friend group (Show Choir, theater kids, sports teams etc.) instead of the person they came to prom with.
Lots of things that were staples and “musts” of high school when I first started at MHS are gone now. We used to have a dance nearly once a month (the back to school dance, Homecoming, a Halloween dance, Sadie Hawkins, a spring formal of sorts for the whole high school since the younger grades couldn’t go to prom and the prom itself). We used to have a pep assembly once a week during football and basketball seasons. Now there is a Homecoming Pep Assembly and that’s about it. There used to be dress up and theme days as well as other “spirit” activities throughout the year and now, next to nothing.
Mitchell High school used to be an experience, now it’s just an attendance center along with the MCTEA building, MTC, DWU and various on line classes. In my early years at MHS, it was akin to being on a cruise with fun times, various activities and social interaction. Certainly not everyone was connected but even though it had much higher enrollment then than it does currently the school was much closer and more cohesive as a student body and an institution than it is now. High school used to be nearer to being part of a family; today it’s more like sharing an airline flight. It’s merely a means to a final destination with lots of other people you don’t really know and don’t necessarily care about; they’re just along for the ride with you. It’s been a sad transition.
Prom is a final vestige of an earlier time. I wonder how much longer the tradition will last at MHS before going the way of all the others that made high school a time and place filled with people that you’d want to see again to relive those glory days reminiscing about proms of the past and other shared memories. Now it seems high school is more like a parking ramp, someplace you stay for a while before moving on; something important and meaningful has been lost, unfortunately change is seldom improvement and often not even progress.