The Best Night of My Life

Lately I have been thinking about high school. Maybe it is the Veronica Mars marathon I have been burning through the last couple of weeks (and really, there aren’t enough superlatives to describe it. I love it, and it doesn’t even vaguely resemble my own high school experiences). I am in the middle of season two and even Mr. Barefoot seems to enjoy it, though I have found that he most enjoys the scenes where Veronica showers. Maybe it is the planned 15-year reunion of my classmates of my tiny graduating class (we didn’t have a reunion after 5 or 10 years like normal classes might). Today, though, it is the sudden influx of prom-related catalogs that flooded my office when the mail arrived. Most of them found their way to the trash posthaste, but I did save one from the recycling because of curiosity, and maybe a bit because of nostalgia.
Of course it was going to be a night I would never forget. It was Prom Night, in big glorious capital letters. That is a really intense pressure to put on an evening. As it turns out, it was a nice night that I still, years later, remember, sort of. There was a dress, that I remember, black with spaghetti straps and cute, perfectly suited for my petite frame. Of course, I still have the dress packed away somewhere, which helps with my recollection. There was a date. I remember that he was very tall, cute and funny – all big pluses to a prom date, though in my case, a platonic date. We had been friends and there was never a hint of romance about our going together. He told me a few years later that he is gay, and it is to that revelation that I attribute his total lack of fawning over me and all of my feminine, prom-dressed glory. And there was a theme. I am certain of that; proms have themes. I just don’t recall what the theme was. I am certain that there was dancing, though I cannot recall a single song that was played. In short, it was a fun night (I am fairly certain), but it was not the best night of my life. It wouldn’t even rank in the top ten nights of my life.
I don’t view my high school years with rose-colored glasses (or with any warm reddish-hued glasses, for that matter) because they were not the best years of my life. I dated someone once who claimed that life would never get better than it was in high school and I told him I thought that was sad. His mom yelled at me for saying that (don’t even ask). If the best years are all behind us, what is the point? Sure, warm fuzzy memories of the past are nice and can even keep you warm when you are shivering on your deathbed. But if you are not currently on that four-poster bed of death, why not move forward with the assumption that the best is yet to come. It may be a radical thought for one of my advanced age, but, lovely as taffeta and balloons may be (were there balloons at my prom?), I still think there are so many more opportunities in the race for Best Night of My Life.