Prom: popularity from the outside

       This Friday I went my friend's prom as his prom date. Apart from being quite wonderful, it was also slightly fascinating, because I was able to have an outside view on what was quite obviously a popularity contest.

      Besides my friend, I knew a couple other people from my orchestra: my good friend Andrea, her friend Amy, and Dave, who happens to be Andrea's good friend, my friend at the best of times, and quite pompous.  I also knew a couple of other people who had gone to my elementary school, and Jeremy, who is Dave's friend and is apparently a horrible person. :)  

      Of course, the evening was sprinkled with liberal amounts of "Prom Drama": furtive angry whispers about how one girl had apparently attempted sabotage on another's dress, dirty looks, and people running to the bathroom crying.  (The one girl that I personally saw crying wasn't actually a victim of the drama as we originally thought, apparently her brother had just died!)

      However, the thing that got me thinking the most was the "Class" slideshow, put together by one of the members of the prom committee.  They had apparently asked students to submit photos of themselves to put in the slideshow.  However, after those were finished off, the rest of the fifteen minute presentation was made up of pictures of the current reigning clique, and the friends of the girl who made the slideshow!  It was actually kind of ridiculous: I counted up to about twenty five appearances or more by some people, while some people I knew made it on there once or not at all.  It was almost as if it was some sort of statement: either you're on here or you don't belong.

      To follow this up, I was talking to my friend Red who is a graduate of that particular school, and he said that he didn't like his prom all that much because "it seemed like one giant popularity contest."  He had no idea how right he was.