Bad prom

[Splatospheric and I are blog dueling today about prom dresses. Today’s topic was prompted by Karen’s brother. I wish I could have found a picture of me at prom!]

What did you wear to prom? How did you get your outfit, and what happened to it?

The no-name brand dress I wore to Junior Prom was made of white polyester fabric speckled with tiny red dots. A wide ruffle stretched across the chest and around the shoulders. A thin, red satin ribbon circled the waist and tied in a bow at the back. I felt like everyone knew it had been purchased off the sale rack at the Miller & Rhoads department store. I had badly wanted a pink taffeta strapless dress, probably by Laura Ashley or Jessica McClintock, the preferred prom dress designers of the mid 1980s. A friend wore this coveted dress to prom. I pretended that I had considered that particular gown during my deliberations and had determined its pinkness was too girly for me.

My mother had initially refused to buy any dress at all that I would wear only once. She could not understand why wearing the right dress to prom was critical to success in American high school. She’d only ever owned two uniform dresses when she was in school, alternating between wearing one and washing the other.

She also reminded me that she had eaten only rice and dried fish for months while living in a tent camp after escaping the North Vietnamese communists when she was six-years-old. Even after our family had reestablished itself in Saigon, she and her sisters contributed to the family coffers by buying pineapples at the market, slicing them into spears, impaling them on bamboo skewers, and hawking the fruit on street corners. Her early childhood deprivations prevented her from making frivolous purchases. And buying something that would be worn only once was the height of frivolity. Her familiar refrain bored me and I pouted until she agreed to take me shopping.

My prom date wore light gray tails and a white tie to the black tie event, finished off with a top hat and cane. Mortified by this ensemble, I attempted to avoid him all night. As soon as we arrived at the John Marshall Hotel, I excused myself to go to the bathroom and gossiped with friends. I emerged after an uncomfortably long time and scurried the opposite direction whenever I saw him. I managed to avoid dancing with him for most of the night. I shimmied in groups of girls to Madonna and Wham! and then fled the dance floor whenever the DJ played a slow song.

I didn’t see that dress again until the late 90s when I visited Vietnam with my mother. She’d brought a large box of used clothes to give to our relatives, most of which had been things I’d discarded over the previous decade. A cousin’s 9-year-old daughter squealed when she dug out my prom dress from a heap of t-shirts, shorts, and other little worn clothing. The little girl pulled the garment over her clothes and wore it for the rest of the day, tripping over the hem and twirling with delight. The dress would have been too long for any of my tiny relatives. But they were happy to have western clothes that their industrious hands could modify to their size. I chuckled seeing the dress given new life after its solitary engagement.