American Pie 2

As I marched tenaciously into Baronjon menswear outlet with my obedient and credit-card bearing mother at heel, a well trained store assistant greeted me on the door mat. Being used to this sort of attention and respect, I merely offered him a nod before progressing to the elevator toward the rear of the store.

Actually, all of this is total bull shit. I was in desperate need of a suit for the end of year prom. This was the last shop in town and my mother was irate, threatening to make me pay for it unless I found something I liked soon. The chinese equivalent of our former ICT teacher frowned at me as I tread mud and rainwater all over his newly installed door mat and looked me up and down in disgust.

I had first groaned at the thought of dressing up in suits and tuxedos (not at the same time of course) just to spend three hours 'mingling' silently with my friends (and enemies), to whom I am already adequately acquainted. The letter from school stated:

"Your son/daughter has expressed an interest in attending the Year 11 Leaver Prom. [various padding] Students will be transported via luxury coach to the presently undecided venue."

Translated as:

"The ugly, dishonest and assertive little shit you call your son/daughter wants you to give us £36 for a ticket, plus £50 for a suit and £5 for drinks on the night. Your child will be bundled into the back of the cheapest, slowest and smelliest twenty year-old double decker bus we can boost. As for the venue, we have no idea where it will be, possibly the school canteen."

After handing over £49 for the first suit I tried on, and swaggering out of the door with a very expensive bag to say the least, my mother and I paid another visit to the 'Tardis Cafe'. Fortunately, I had emptied my bladder twice in the fifteen minutes before leaving home that morning.

The evening itself started adequately. We were all searched - or rather, felt up by some perverted security guard. Security guard? Oh yes. The school decided to pay another company to organise the entire thing, probably costing everyone an extra £5 just to pay for the buffet and champagne at the shareholders AGM.

My prom date this was not. This was not me. Thank God for Google Images Search.

The original letter from school stated that we would enter the venue on a red carpet. Ha! This was the most pathetic, threadbare, maroon 3 metres of Carpet Right off cut that I have ever seen.

Professional photographers were supposed to be at the event to take individual and group photos. What I saw was some fat woman in blue jeans taking group snaps with some crappy little HP compact camera. Apologies, but after having recently purchased an Canon D-SLR (oh yeah!), I am afraid I am above novice photography. The fat woman actually had a key ring machine that put the photos into some low-grade, clear plastic key ring. I refrained from wasting my money on this, although my friends decided that £2 was good value from some badly framed, awfully lit and microscopic 3cm x 2cm image embedded in scratched plastic. Phew!

The evening was rounded off with a slideshow of photos of everyone from Year 7 and the current Year 11 side by side to see the comparisons. Chortle! You should have seen Jingo five years ago. I've hardly changed a bit though. Others were almost unrecognisable, but some people had an empty box with 'Insert Clipart Here' written in it!

So we all squelched off through the mud at midnight and went home as sober virgins. Hardly American Pie.