WIN AGGIE WINCHESTER!
More giveaways! My next book, THE IMPLOSION OF AGGIE WINCHESTER, won’t be out until August, but you can win an advance copy now!
Much of the book centers around the prom and what a big deal it is to the small Minnesota town where Aggie Winchester lives. In the comments, please tell me a prom story — or one you heard, or even one you made up if you haven’t actually been to prom — and I’ll choose one of the stories as the winner! I will base the selection on originality and heart, which are totally subjective but it’s my blog so, uh, there.
I’ll leave the comments open until June 3 and pick the winner that day.
And, even though I’m not eligible to win, here’s my story anyway:
I went to my junior prom with my friend Chris, who is my pal to this day. He was a total gentleman the whole time, and I kept telling him he made me feel like Cinderella.
A few days after the prom was over, Chris visited my house and gave me a miniature glass slipper.
Cinderella indeed.
** Oh, oh, and for the record, Chris’s daughter just went to prom! So, like, I totally feel old but I love that his daughter went to prom the same year my book about prom (and, okay, a lot more than prom) is coming out. Yay!
18 Responses to “WIN AGGIE WINCHESTER!”
May 27th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Not an official entry, but I thought I should share my prom photo:
http://thatneilguy.blogspot.com/2008/02/happy-birthday-lisa.html
May 27th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Zomg! Neil! You are such a mac daddy in that suit. Seriously. I am cracking up all over the place. Best. Picture. Evar!!!
May 27th, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Okay, and also? I just realized those aren’t *bleachers* you’re sitting on. It’s supposed to be a park bench. Thus, the cardboard trees and cut-out stars. Got it. #keeptheawesomecoming
May 27th, 2011 at 4:11 pm
This is a long one but let’s just say, I’m pretty confident I win.
At my high school, prom was just for seniors. My junior year, a senior boy invited me to prom and I felt super cool. Bonus points that he was a football player, but deduct points because his name was Ernie. Still, I was going to senior prom.
But he’d asked me in I think February, and we weren’t dating exclusively or anything, and by about April, he was smitten with this naughty new girl at our school and really wanted to take her instead.
Rather than manning up and just telling me that, or honoring the commitment he’d already made, he hatched an elaborate plan: he sought out my on-again, off-again boyfriend, who at the time was off but always up for a scheme, and got him to ask the naughty new girl to prom — and we’d double. He and his co-conspirator would then switch dates at some point during the night.
For reasons unclear to me now, I go forward with a double date to prom that is me and the football player who didn’t really want to go with me, and my on-again, off-again boyfriend and the naughty girl.
We get to dinner at a fancy place (or at least fancy by the standards of Saginaw, Mich.) and naughty girl says she’s going to the bathroom and asks me to go with her. She tells me she and my erstwhile boyfriend think what my date has cooked up is awful and they’re conspiring to stick it to him.
The bill comes and the other two pretend to have forgotten their wallets, sticking my date paying for all four of us. Because I’m surely not paying for my dinner, either.
The night goes on and it’s marginally fun, but mainly because I’m watching it as a soap opera — my erstwhile boyfriend and the naughty girl are actually hitting it off, and my date is realizing not only is the switcheroo not happening, but I’m not happy with him either, so he isn’t juggling two girls, he’s got zero.
After the dance, I’ve had enough of the drama so I just ask to get dropped off. And the three of them drive off to go partying, because I think naughty girl had coke.
I wake up in the morning with the phone ringing relatively early. Naughty girl’s mother wants to know where she is because she hasn’t come home yet, and my mom flies into interrogation mode because surely this means I’ve been up to no good, too.
This is before cell phones so I have no way of knowing where anyone went after I came home, and since I hadn’t much cared, I didn’t ask about their plans. But naughty girl’s parents come over to our house and they and my mom take turns grilling me about everything that happened. Her parents are looking to find their daughter, my mom is looking for a reason to ground me.
After her parents leave, I tell my mom about my date’s failed scheme so she’ll understand why I have no idea where they were. I’m not sure if she believed me because it does sound pretty made up.
Apparently the three of them went out drinking til dawn, including swimming in a pond that involved the boys going in in their tuxes, then crashed at a friend of my erstwhile boyfriend’s. They were still sleeping while I was being interrogated.
I ended up becoming sort of friends with the naughty girl, who asked me to help with her alibi, and she and my erstwhile boyfriend dated for a while, which in true teenage fashion made me jealous enough that he and I got back together yet again later.
I went to my senior prom with the erstwhile boyfriend, who I was then on again with. But I couldn’t tell my parents he was my date because they’d forbidden me from seeing him, so I had to cook up a scheme to tell my parents I was going stag with friends.
But that’s a whole different story.
May 27th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
Colleen! This is so hilarious! Omg, I love that you get dropped off, have a tame night with good decision-making, and totally get the third degree. Also: coke. Wow.
May 27th, 2011 at 4:43 pm
It WAS the ’80s. But yeah, I think it was the first time I’d been with someone doing coke.
Did I mention my dad was a cop? Yeah.
May 27th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
I should have mentioned that because it was the 80s, my date was wearing a royal blue Miami Vice jacket tux. I wish I had a photo to share, but picture me with the requisite mullet in a royal blue and black Gunne Sax dress with a football player dressed like Don Johnson.
May 27th, 2011 at 6:23 pm
I hated prom. My two best friends were in luv with their boyfriends and rented a fancy limo for the night. Somehow they acquired a couple bottles of champagne and tooled around town before the big dance waving to friends, listening to awesome 80s music, and having the time of their lives. I wasn’t dating anyone at the time. One of my friends felt sorry for me so arranged for this nerdy super math genius to take me to prom. He didn’t have many friends so we went by ourselves in his grandfather’s oldsmobile and split a can of Stroh’s Beer in the K-Mart parking lot before the big night. The really sad things is, splitting that beer was the highlight of the night!
May 27th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Oh, Kristy, you poor thing! I bet you looked beautiful, though. Do you have pictures? I know your hair was, like, ten feet tall in those days. Also, at least he didn’t split a can of Pig’s Eye with you. (That’s the only thing I can think of that’s worse than Stroh’s.)
May 28th, 2011 at 1:08 am
My sophomore year in high school was fairly great. I had a bunch of good friends and always had something going on. The only thing that was missing was a girlfriend.
The lack of a girlfriend normally did not bother me. Girls were a little strange, and I had more than enough stuff to do with out dealing with all the drama they brought to all of my friends. But every once in a while there was a small sense that something was missing.
One of those times was during the week of prom my sophomore year in high school. It seemed like all anyone could talk about was going to prom and who was going with who. At the peak of this mania, the cute freshman girl that had a locker next to me expressed her same degree of frustration and told me that in no uncertain terms that if the two of us were not dating anyone my senior year, I was going to take her to the prom.
Well, believe it or not, that was all it took to fill that sense that something was missing. For the most part, from that moment on, I knew that I had a date to the senior prom and I no longer had to worry about girls. I happily went through the remainder of high school focused on my studies, sports, my job, and my friends.
Occasionally, my teenage hormones would surge and I would make horrible attempts at flirting with girls. Did you see 40 Year Old Virgin? It was like that but far worse. These train wrecks quickly subdued any hormones and I quickly, and happily, retreated to other activities content in the thought that ‘Hey, at least prom is taken care of.’
Sure enough, as my senior prom approached I was without a girlfriend. That cute little freshman had grown into a beautiful young woman. True to form, she presented me with a poster asking me to prom. It was clear she had spent the night before looking through magazines and cutting out all of the pictures that in any way related to prom. Of course I said yes.
Prom came and went. We both had a great time. We ate. We danced. We stayed up all night. It was a really fun experience.
Once again, girls befuddled me. I had no idea what to do next. I believe I saw her only a handful of times after that night, but I will never forget what a great night we had, and how it all started with a little freshman telling me how things were going to work.
Seven years went by. I was bartending on New Years Eve and this cute red head came into my bar. We got to talking and as her and her friends were getting ready to leave, she told me where they were going and that I should join her. Being New Years Eve, and me being a bartender, she never thought I would show up.
Well, the second she was out of the bar, I told the bartender I was working with that he had to close by himself and I headed out after her. When I walked into the club, she was shocked to see me. As midnight approached, she turned to me and said “At midnight, I’m eating this herring, and then I’m kissing you!”
This was it. Another girl telling me how things were going to work. That worked great for me before and I let magic slip through my fingers once. I did not make the mistake a second time.
Last month we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. I owe it all to that cute freshman that took me to my senior prom.
I am glad I gave her that glass slipper.
May 28th, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Awww, CMW. You totally win a book just for that entry. I’ll still give an ARC to someone else, but that right there? That’s a winner entry that melted me. Thanks for writing something so full of heart — and win.
May 30th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
Ok, this is not MY prom story, but in fact a prom story about my older sister. Having been whisked from Ann Arbor to my mother’s dinky hometown in the UP by my mother at the beginning of the school year – we all had a terrible adjustment, but Kathy (a freshman) was in a state of real trauma. She moved through that school year feeling so much an outsider and really just trying to find her way. She was fairly shy but man, oh, man her unhappiness came out tenfold at home. She was teenage angst personified. We were on eggshells just praying she’d find anything positive in a day. She met a senior and they starting dating and the fact that Kathy was a freshman and had been asked to the prom by a senior probably would’ve caused more of a ruckus by my mother some other time but they were felt like it would cause more trouble with her little emotional hurricane.
The day of the prom came and my grandmother had made her dress – it was really lovely. It was a sheath to the floor with an floral organza overlay of gold, orange & yellow. She was stomping around like one of Cinderella’s stepsisters, demanding make up, hair spray, towels, help with hairdrying – shrill as you please – just being a complete diva. I was staying out of the way, trying to ignore her (a challenge) and avoid being a target of her wrath. I was engrossed in Alice in Wonderland on my mother’s bed and suddenly felt a strange feeling in stomach. I lay still hoping it would go away until finally I could stand it no longer and said “Mom, I think I have to throw up.” She grabs me by the wrist, tries the doorknob to the bathroom…locked. She says “Kathy, your sister is sick, unlock this door.” “NO! I am getting ready and that little bitch is going get in my way!” I am certainly green by now…beads of sweat on my forehead. “KATHRYN FRANCES COLLINS OPEN THIS DOOR!” Now my mother is pounding on it.
Growling we hear her unlock and swoop the door open – redfaced and hands on her hips – and a fountain comes in an arc & hits her from mid-thigh down ALL OVER HER PROM DRESS. As I dash past to the toilet – she is on her tiptoes frantically screaming & jumping up & down. She made it a little hard for my mother to be sympathetic as she was screaming “you stupid, little bitch – you did this on purpose!” and “I hope she dies from whatever is she has!”
Nonetheless, she was also my mother’s daughter and she simply jumped into dress rescue mode. Since I was still vomiting – no details are recalled here but my mother did actually rescue the dress. She also harshly whispered to my brother that he, under NO circumstances would mention this previous drama when Kathy’s date arrived. I was tucked into my bed with Ginger Ale & Alice in Wonderland, crying over the havoc I had wreaked. The date arrived and I heard my mother saying how handsome he looked & I know she took pictures, because we still have them. If you know Kathy very well, you could tell she’d been crying but she looked happy & smiling.
My mother cannot tell that story without tears – of laughter – she always thought it was her comeuppance for being such an insufferable brat. I adore my sister and we became great friends after I graduated from high school & remain so 30 years later. Hard to believe she’s the same person.
My prom stories are boring & uneventful: was popular, got asked twice, drank but not too much, had fun & did not have sex with boys that I would later come to regret. XO
June 1st, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Hahahaha!! Julia, I love the details in this story story. The beads of sweat, Alice in Wonderland, the organza dress. Awesome. Thanks for sharing! You cracked me up.
June 1st, 2011 at 2:13 pm
I started to type out my Junior prom story and realized it would take up WAY too much space. Leading up to the prom I was threatened with bodily harm and drowning, as well as midnight phone calls from my date’s Ex. Then, when we finally went to prom, I was yelled at by the Ex’s friends and only had my date for about a third of the night. We also went with another couple. The girl didn’t go to our school, so she spent all night trying to steal other girls dates, and also fondled my date during the whole car ride home…with her FEET. It sounds like kind of a nightmare, but honestly, it was pretty hilarious and I had quite a lot of fun. It’s definitely a night I’ll never forget, and when I tell the story, people are always amused, so it worked out. If you ever want to hear the details, I’m happy to share.
June 3rd, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Holy drama, Vanessa! I’m glad you made it out of that night safely! And found a way to giggle about it too. You rule.
June 1st, 2011 at 11:31 pm
My prom story requires a little background info. Bear with me.
Sophomore year, my best friend and I acted in plays at a nearby all-boys school. We thought it would be a good way to pursue our dramatic passions, since our school had cancelled its fall production, but obviously meeting new guys was the real draw. Girlfriend hooked up with a cute sophomore guy fairly quickly; I totally fell for a senior who I was actually able to have real conversations with. He liked books! And hockey! And slurpees! I considered myself pretty star-crossed when it came to boys, so the possibility that this romance might pan out was unbelievably exciting. So one night, Senior Guy drove me home after rehearsal, and I would have bet anything that he was ready to make his move. What he did instead was confess his love for Girlfriend, all the while telling me what a great friend *I* was for being there for him, for listening to him. You’re fucking welcome, dude.
Girlfriend soon realizes that the cute sophomore guy is sort of a skeez, and ends up getting together with Senior Guy. I try to play it cool, thinking that I can take the high road and we can all still be friends. Yeah, that was a great idea.
Fast forward to prom season. Girlfriend and Senior Guy are now Together and are of course going. Senior Guy tells me at rehearsal one night that another guy in the cast wants to ask me. But Senior Guy is not sure I should say yes, because, um, he’s pretty sure this other guy likes me and is going to try to get some at Prom. The upside, he says, is that we can double. And I shouldn’t worry, because if this guy is trying anything out of line, he’ll totally have my back.
This other guy does in fact ask me, and I say yes, mostly because I feel like there’s no real reason to say no. But as the night gets closer, and I realize this was all a terrible idea. My date is getting crazy excited—he has called multiple times to talk about the night and “just to chat.” He says he is wearing “something insane” but won’t tell me what it is. There is apparently some wild after-party somewhere. He is sort-of-maybe-definitely hitting on me whenever the opportunity arises. And I am waking up to the Captain-Obvious news that part of why I am feeling so bad about this is that I am not actually over Senior Guy at all, and that being “friends” with him while watching him be in love with Girlfriend—and then call me all depressed when she’s mean to him—is awful.
Prom night: my date arrives, wearing a turquoise zoot suit. No, not dark aqua. Bright. Turquoise. People stare everywhere we go. We arrive at Prom, held in a hunting lodge, because nothing says Night to Remember like deer heads. Everyone is staring at us there too, and I cannot tell if they legit think my date is awesome, or if they are just mocking him. We dance a little, and given that he is definitely not leaving room for the holy ghost, I beg off. As I am sitting there, watching more people converse with him about the zoot suit, I observe Girlfriend and Senior Guy slow dance. This other friend of mine has recently started seeing a guy at this school and THEY are slow dancing. I then spot this kid who I had a crazy crush on when I was nine, and HE is slow dancing with a very nice-looking girl (anyone who grew up in Baltimore will confirm that this last scenario is not at all improbable… everyone is everywhere, and people from your past wander out of the woodwork when you least expect it). I am just praying the floor will open and swallow me.
The night ends right after the dance because my parents have wisely denied me access to the wild after-party. My date tries to make out with me upon drop-off, and I am not very nice about being like “NO.” (While this is happening Senior “I’ll-have-your-back-if-he-tries-anything” Guy is just watching this and not doing a thing other than looking uncomfortable.) My date drives off in his zoot suit; I go home and fall into a cranky slumber.
Moral of the story? Wow, could I have had a little more of a sense of humor about the whole thing? Zoot Suit and I were definitely not the match of the millennium, or even of May 1996, but he was an interesting guy who had the cojones to wear a turquoise zoot suit to his prom. I could have been a way better time. And the real moral of the story: the guy that actually wants to go to a dance with you is worth more attention that the guy who you wish would notice you.
On another prom night, the limo driver offered to buy booze for our group. That such an act seemed normal is probably the sketchiest part of the whole situation, other than the fact that he actually did it.
June 3rd, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Aqua zoot suit?!? PLEASE tell me there are pictures of this somewhere. Holy wah. What a great story. I felt your angst all the way through. I really did! You sure landed the best guy in the prom of life, though. Which is quite possibly the cheesiest thing I have ever typed ever.
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