Last week, Friday (the 7th), Mer and I were chaperons to CVCA’s annual “prom.” “Prom” is in quotation marks because the event is actually the Junior-Senior Banquet, but it is shorter to call it prom, so everyone does.

I really like prom. I like to see the kids all dressed up, and I like to see Mer dressed up, and I like to have a reason to break out the tux every year. Mer and I have been invited for several years running, because she took it upon herself to get parents to write nice letters about the graduating seniors, and then Mer prints them out on good paper and gets them to the students at prom. I get to tag along as her date, but I also am usually invited to aid in tech stuff. A tradition of Junior-Senior is the Senior Video – a video made up of mostly baby shots followed by the senior photo of each member of the senior class. This requires a DVD player or laptop, and a projector, so I am usually expected to be on hand to make sure everything goes okay.

Usually, Mer and I get to prom, I set up the projector, and then Mer and I get to watch the students come in all dressed up and we get to talk about which dresses we like. Yes, it is not football and beer, but I like to see elegant dresses and I have firm opinions on them, and Mer and I like to compare notes. It is one of the small joys of prom. Sadly, that was not in the cards for me this year.

The major entertainment of the evening was based around a fake band called The Flealands – the “band” of teachers Mr. Fleagle and Mr. Newland. It has been a running joke all year long, so they were invited to play prom. As part of the entertainment, they had an elaborate movie documenting the breakup and reunion of The Flealands, just in time for prom. It was excellent and funny and well received, but it was all on a Macintosh computer. That was not mine. So, I had to wait for the Mac to show up. As these things tend to go, it showed up about 30 minutes late. It then turned out we did not have the needed video adapter for the computer, so that necessitated my making a very hasty run to Best Buy, in my tux. I got several nice comments on it.

Anyway, everything turned out just fine, but by the time I had everything working, the formal dinner was about to get started and I had missed the entrance promenade of all the students coming in to register and get pictures taken. That was too bad – the students I saw throughout the evening all looked very good.

Prom took place in a great setting this year – the Cuyahoga Falls Sheraton hotel. It is right on the river, which is pretty, and the banquet room is huge, so it actually held the entire shindig comfortably. The food was buffet-style, and was very good. After supper, I ran The Flealands’ reunion video to much amusement, which included a brief appearance of the rival fake band, “Fir Tree,” which is made up of two Bible teachers and also does not exist. The Flealands did eventually take the stage and did about 20 minutes of funny songs, including a CVCA-prom-themed version of a Miley Cyrus song. It was fun. After the senior video, the formal part of the evening broke up, and most of the kids went on to the nearby after-party, about two miles away at the Cuyahoga Falls Natatorium. After-party is held to give the students more to do after prom, and has games and food and music and prizes and so on, and usually goes until about 2:30 or 3:00 am. The biggest downer for the students was the fact that the transition time from prom to after-party happened during a  fierce thunderstorm. By the time Mer and I had helped finish with tear-down and clean-up, the rain had pretty much stopped. I was pretty happy about that.

Mer and I made an appearance at after-party, as we always try to do. We ate some more food, and had much fun  watching the now casually-dressed students run around. There was an inflatable obstacle course, and wallyball, and basketball, and racquetball, and other things going on. We were both very amused by watching one of Mer’s very competitive students trying to shake four ping pong balls out of a kleenex box that was strapped to his butt. He took it very seriously, and it was a hoot to watch.
 
So, Mer and I called it a relatively early evening, and went home to go to sleep around midnight.