As I've mentioned a few times before, almost all the people who work with me at the store are girls and most of them are still in high school. It's not a terribly big area either (I'm unusual for commuting from two towns over), so some of them attend or used to attend the same schools. Teenage girls tend to stick together so they all chatter amiably with one another when they're working but there aren't any customers around. A few days ago after closing, we were instructed to try and clear up some of the chaos of discarded clothes in the women's clearance section so they were all in the same place at the same time and had no other responsibilities diverting their attention. They were chattering amiably about peers and teachers and events that had nothing to do with me, making me feel awkward and unwelcome, but I listened in anyway because I enjoy listening to other people's conversations.
Well, they were all talking about prom.
Since you have to be at least sixteen to work at the store, they're all at least juniors or seniors which are the students for whom proms are actually intended. (At my high school, sophomores and freshmen weren't allowed to go unless they were accompanying a junior or senior as a date. No idea if that's the way things are done around here but I expect it probably is.) They were all positively abuzz with excitement about it even though prom season isn't until May at the absolute earliest. But the kids at my old school usually started talking about prom and prom plans on the first day of eleventh grade and didn't shut the fuck up about it until the day after senior prom. So it's not unusual for them to be preoccupied and inexhaustibly enthusiastic about the whole business and the details involved.
They were talking about guys who asked their girlfriends or crushes to the big event in creative ways (one guy apparently wrote 'PROM?' on his belly in paint and then whipped his shirt off), about the venue it was to be held at, their dresses, their dates, who is taking whom and which couples are cute and which aren't getting along. Limos, dinner plans, post-prom plans. Hair, shoes, makeup. Finding a date versus just going with a group of girls.
I didn't even understand this mindset when I was that age. I only went to my prom because my mother made me. (Yes, MADE ME--I didn't even want to go at all but she wasn't having it and I hate my mom's emotionally manipulative passive-aggressive retaliatory tactics too much to have fought with her about it.) And also my good friend at the time who went to a different school really wanted to go because her tiny private school didn't have a prom. I had a miserable time and hated the dress and felt extremely awkward and uncomfortable. There are no pictures of me from my prom, for which I am very grateful, though my mother never quite forgave me for failing to enjoy myself or bring home cheerful happy memories of an event I hadn't even wanted to attend in the first place.
Anyway, the girls were chit-chattering all night (making women's clearance look less like a war-zone takes several hours), and I was listening in and inwardly shaking my head at the frivolity of the subject they were discussing with all the gushing earnest that teenage girls apply to things that will never be of any importance to them again.
I can't really even bring myself to be annoyed at them for it.
Oh, to be young again--to have so little to dominate my focus that I can spend so much time and effort on something like a prom. Let them have their princess fantasy. Let them believe it's as important as all the TV shows and teen movies make it seem. Eventually they'll have to step away from the comparatively sheltered existence that is high school and face the real world--even though I don't really get all the hype, in the end they're entitled to one last bout of childlike enthusiasm before they have to leave childhood behind for good.
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