Prom Night in Grovers Corners
Prom night in our little town, when all kinds of people come to watch the kids get on the buses that will bring them to the big dance. They first started to have this night of public inspection almost 18 years ago when kids used to get really wasted before their proms. This way, where they have to walk 18 inches away from a double line of eagle-eyed grown-ups, they’re not so likely to be ‘impaired’. There’s less drunkenness these days anyway, among people of every age. I mean a kid six knows what substance abuse is, and he knows it isn't cool A kid eight understand the concept of denial. It's a new world and I'm not the one prepared to say it's a worse world.These days the prom-bound young first go in to the gym where for all I know they get look over, wanded - breathalyzed too maybe. Then they emerge at last, looking new-made in the golden light of evening.It does take a good hour to get them all on the buses but no one seems to mind. Certainly not the kids, who seem the opposite of bored. They have it all before them after all, the dancing, the not-dancing, the loosening of the necktie as the ballroom gets hotter, the eternal tugging-up of those lovely strapless gowns....And later the After Party and the Party After That and then The Next Morning at Somebody's Vacation House...I pulled out my video camera hoping to catch some of the remarks the waiting crowd was making. For example one woman kept saying “This is retarded, all this waiting!” And at one point a guy said, “I’m waitin’ for the short bus myself.” People are pretty careless in their utterances but what are you gonna do? They're human. Anyway I didn't catch any of that on camera. What I did catch seem to be the backs of heads, dye jobs, bra straps, and somebody's short gray hair like iron filings -- in other words a quick candid pan of all of us onlookers whose night it wasn't. That was fine by us who had but one clear goal: to get those shiny kids uploaded and sent on their way. Here's to them all I say; may they enjoy to the hilt these last moments of unadulterated youth.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKY0ERgsrig]
