2000-04-09

My Sunday.

I've been obsessed for some time now with throwing myself a prom. For reasons too sad and pathetic to get into here, I didn't go to my prom back in 1988. And while I've been assured, by the three or four school friends I've managed to stay in touch with over the last 12 years, that I really didn't miss out on much, I still feel...cheated. Jilted. Like maybe it would've been the most magical, transformative night of my life. In all likelihood, my friends are correct and the final dance of the evening was "I Had the Time of My Life," and I would've spent much of the time dodging insults from two-thirds of the lacrosse team. But damn it, I still want to go to the prom.

Hope in this Plan of Plans was renewed on Friday evening, when the luminously beautiful and prodigiously gifted Miss Paula Kelley and I went out to the Middle East restaurant and got silly drunk. I learned that Paula, too, had never gone to a prom and like me, had spent more than a decade drifting in and out of the nebulous world of "What If?"

So we're going to have a prom.

Even if Paula and I are the only ones there.

We're going to get drunk on Peach Schnapps and puke in my parents' driveway.

It's going to be so much fun.

Today I went to the laundromat. While The Marquis traipsed through his debaucherous vacation in Nawlins, being fabulous and frisky, I sat in Bubbles Coin-Op of West Roxbury and read the issue of Jane magazine with Monica Lewinsky on the cover. Surely my cup runneth over.

It was all well and good until a woman came in, wearing super-tight jeans and a Merle Haggard t-shirt, followed by her litter of four croupy bespectacled kids. Kev, being the tender-hearted sort he is in regards to beings of the barely post-zygote variety, would argue that I am painting an exaggerated portrait of this family, that the children were quite well-behaved, really, and not the gaggle of grotesques I am about to describe, but the truth of the matter is that he left to go grocery shopping while I was waiting for my laundry to dry, so he missed out on the spectacle in its entirety.

The mother loaded her several bags of dirty clothes into one of the industrial-sized washers, and then herded the kids off next door. When they returned, they were armed with a mid-morning repast the likes of which I have not seen since my freshman year of college: Doritos, Cracker Jacks, several bottles of Mountain Dew, and a package of Bubble Yum. The mother then proceeded to lean up against one of the dryers to work on her scratch cards. "Didja win anything, Ma?" one of the kids bleated.

"Nahhh, I don't like these ones. I'm tired a'winnin' one or two bucks. We need to win big, don't we?"

The next half-hour or so, I tried not to hear the following exclamations:

"Now, lookit this. Don't put them Cracker Jacks on the floor like that, else they'll spill all ovah the place. Are you gonna have any more? I'm not gonna buy this anymore if you're not gonna eat it; we got 2 practically full boxes at home."

"Chris, whudditItellyuh? If you're not gonna share them Doritos with your sistahs, then I won't take you to McDonald's for dinnah."

Eventually one of the kids noticed me not noticing them:

"Ma! Ma! MAA!"

"What?!"

"Lookit that lady's socks...she gots zebra stripes on her socks..."

"Yeah?"

"Why does she got socks like that, Ma?"

"Because she likes 'em, I guess."

She looked at me and smiled. I immediately felt bad about all the ugly thoughts I was having about her progeny.

Not bad enough, obviously, to refrain from writing about them as soon as I got home...

lisamcc at 17:36:07

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