So as you can tell by all of the posts of Facebook, it's prom season. Hundreds of thousands of high school students get all dressed up in expensive dresses and tuxedos, take dozens of picture with their dates, and go to a semi-fancy venue where they party all night. Prom is a major event in the life of most people when they think about their high school career. But unlike the majority of Americans, I never went to my high school prom, and I'm ok with it.
When I was in high school, the idea of going to a dance with hundreds of other people from school sounded awful. I once went to homecoming and I hated it. All it was was a bunch of people that I wasn't really friends with grinding up on each other to terrible techno music. This is not something that I consider fun. This is what I expected prom to be like, except everyone's wearing fancier clothes. And after talking to my friends who went, my predictions were pretty accurate.
Now, if I really wanted to go to prom, I could have. But I think the only way that I probably would have gone was if a boy asked me to go with him. But of course, that never happened. No boy ever liked me enough to ask me to prom. I didn't want to spend the money on a dress that I would only wear for one night and I wouldn't even have a date to go with me. It just seemed like a waste of time, energy, and money. I also would have probably just ended up sitting at a table by myself, stuffing my face while I watched all of the people "dance."
To go along with the fact that school dances are my worst nightmare, there was also another important event going on that day, the Husker spring game. I would so much rather spend my day sitting in Memorial Stadium watching football than sitting somewhere getting my hair done. The spring game is one of my favorite events even though it's just a scrimmage. Memorial Stadium on game day is one of my favorite places and it is so much better than worrying about going to prom.
There are times when I wonder if I missed out on something important because I didn't experience the joy of going to prom. But is the fact that I didn't go really going to affect the rest of my life? I don't believe so. There are more important things to worry about than whether or not the fact that I didn't go to prom is going to negatively impact my life. And in the long run, it's not going to. When I tell people that I never went to prom, they might think that I missed out on something or judge me because of it. But their opinion isn't all that important to me. I don't regret my decision. There will be more events in my life that could have a similar impact that going to prom would have had, so I am at peace with my choice. And if you didn't go to prom or don't feel the desire to, don't be ashamed of that, embrace your decision.
