The Prom

It is 2am and I just got home from the prom. No, not mine, silly, the Senior Prom which I coordinated, hosted and watched over like the Jewish mother I am. My ears are ringing and I am strangely wired right now. This is the second night this week I have been up this late. I am going to pay for this.

The first night this week I was up past my mommy-teacher bedtime was Thursday. It was Gradnight at Disneyland with my Seniors. I worked all day Thursday, picked up my kids, played with them, fed them, bathed them, read to them, then the overpriced and well trusted babysitter arrived at 8pm. I left to meet my students at school and we headed to Disneyland at 9:30. I got everyone squared away before the bus arrived and noticed a few of my senior boys smelled like a bar. None were drunk, just, well, smelled like they might become so, so I put my foot down. I lectured in the main foyer of the school.

“You don’t need to get drunk at Disneyland!” I began LOUDLY. “For crap sake, it’s the happiest place on earth!”. One of my more amusing students offered for me to smell him. “Come on, Ms. Levine, you know you want to smell me.” I laughed. They know me too well by now. I can’t be pissed too long at any of them.

Gradnight was fun but exhausting. There were four dance areas, food, fireworks and all of the thousands of students were locked down at Disney. I knew they were relatively safe. At least from any outside harm. What they did to themselves, who knows.

My fellow chaperone and I rode two rides and then stood in line at Space Mountain for an hour. It was 2am and I realized we had stopped chatting. I offered to buy him a churro if we left the line and headed to the chaperone center. He was happy to leave. Disney treats their chaperones well. Well fed, we watched a movie with the other sleeping chaperones until 4am and then headed for the bus to start collecting the kids. A thirty minute walk at 4am was not as much fun as it sounds. By 5:30, we realized we had lost two misdirected students who took a wrong turn and ended up at an IHop OUTSIDE of Disneyland. Thank goodness they all had my cell number. We scooped them up by 6am and headed, zombified, back to school.

Sleeping all day threw off my schedule. I collected my own kids at 5pm and regaled them with stories and gifts from Disneyland. I was surprised they weren’t mad at me for going to their favorite place without them. But presents and pizza made up for it. I fell asleep ten seconds after them and woke up with the worst cold. They let me sleep on the couch while they played video games on the computer. They even brought me orange juice (spilled all over the living room) and snuggled me until 10am. I love my children. And apparently am bringing them up right (ya know, not complaining that I was immobile on the couch all morning).

My children started arguing around 11am and I suggested to Max that if Dash was going to shoot him with a Nerf gun, he needed to tackle him and tickle his brother. This advice was given while I was in the shower, so all I heard were screams of laughter.

After I dropped them off at the dreaded X's house, I headed to a summer teaching position job interview where I was forced to take a mock SAT exam. Just so you know, the old adage, “those who can’t teach, do” is partially true. I scored a perfect score on the vocab, a perfect score on the reading comprehension and then a 20% on the grammar. Yep, my mom enjoyed that one.

And then…the prom.

Hurrying home from the interview, I threw my hair into a French twist (I had no idea I could actually do this) but some sparkly barrettes in it, applied A LOT of make-up to the dark circles under my eyes, put on my fabulous fifteen year old dress and way too fabulous shoes and headed out the door. The shoes, oh my goodness, they were too fabulous. (And on sale.) Silver strappy sandals, five inch heels, gorgeous and now I have a permanent dent on both of my achilles where the little zippers were. Beauty knows no pain. The dress is fifteen years old and the last time I wore it was on my rehearsal dinner for my wedding. Bad luck aside, I must say, I looked pretty damn good.

The prom itself went off without a hitch. I had my favorite teachers chaperone, so that just made it more fun. My students all looked so…beautiful. The girls who wear their hair up with no make-up at school suddenly looked like women. They were all so sparkly and pretty. Some magically grew hair overnight and eyelashes too. The boys, in their tuxes that matched their dates…all of them…magic.

The thing is, watching an event that you personally planned for eight months go off without a hitch was magic. The two girls who gotten into a fight two weeks ago stayed far away from each other. But then again, it probably would be hard to fight in floor-length ball gowns and five inch heels. But nevertheless, they acted like the ladies they looked like.

There was only one drunk kid and he wasn’t one of mine. Plus, when he did act up and the wonderful security guards of The Bardot wanted to kick him out, I pulled, as my kids call it, “a ghetto Ms Levine” on him, and he was cool for the rest of the night. I really should have kicked his ass out, but he had been fixed up with one of my most favorite and most shy girls, and I didn’t want her night to be ruined. She had to deal with the little drunkard and actually seemed grateful that I watched over her all night.

You plan an event like this, something that is a once in a lifetime event for these kids, and you want it to be perfect. And being, well, me, I wanted it to be so; and it damn near was. You stock it with great teachers who are fun and won’t be a buzzkill; you have an awesome DJ who knows how to play a song for every kid in the place; and you have one of your best friends be the photographer and really, you can’t go wrong. The security at The Bardot was amazed by how great my students were. None of them could believe they were all just kids from South Central. Seriously, I was kvelling, as any good Jewish mother to thirty-eight students would.

I have to say my favorite part of the evening, besides crowning the Prom King and Queen, (I really wanted to keep one of the tiaras. Damn.) was when the very cute and (yay) single supervisor of The Bardot fixed my favorite teacher and me some actual drinks. Seriously needed. Five hours of prom duty. Vodka. Good.

After all of the prom-goers left, we got to go to the club next door, for free, as VIP guests. This was fun for a few reasons. (and fun for about thirty minutes) Number one: a large glass of vodka after five hours of chaperone-ing was very needed. (I think I just said that. That is how needed it was.) Number two: I haven’t been to a nightclub in ages, and we got to be on the DJ stage and watch all of the twenty-somethings tweaking and rolling and whatever. It was all very surreal, go-go dancers, being hit on by twenty year olds (hehehe), to be in my evening gown and French twist, watching this scene that I was no longer a part of and really didn’t feel the need to be a part of anymore. Club days are over for me, pretty much. I mean, I wouldn’t say no to go out dancing because I have realized that the last two times I had been out dancing were at my nephew’s bar mitzvah and at the senior prom I had just attended. Perhaps I do need to go out dancing more, but crap, I am just too tired by the time Saturday night rolls around. Netflix is just too convenient.

So, let’s recap. Too many late nights this week, my cold is coming back, my seniors had fun and that makes me super happy, and I am old and white. Yes, dancing with my Seniors taught me that. Although, I have to say I do a mean “cat daddy”…

I am going to sleep now. And I am sleeping until I have to pick up my children, so don’t call me.