First published in the Ipswich Local News March 24, 2024
To parent is to jolt along from one unexpected turn of events to the next — all while being expected to constantly provide food. It doesn’t matter how many kids you have or how many times you’ve done whatever milestone you’ve done. Not a single experience with one kid is transferable to the next. Our first daughter literally almost died on a bike, and the other one taught herself how to ride when I didn’t even know she was outside.
Famous books notwithstanding, there is no way to expect what you are not expecting.
Including — and please take a deep breath — prom dress shopping.
See above and hear me when I say this was not my first rodeo. In fact, with two daughters, it was my fifth prom rodeo (giddy-up?), including a lovely purple, princess-style dress bought two weeks before the world shut down in 2020. See? Dress shopping on the cusp of a multi-year deadly global pandemic is not an experience I expect to ever draw upon again.
Still, one thing I know: prom dressing shopping is like car shopping. It’s high pressure, stressful, often hot, never private, and full of people who will say quite literally anything to make the sale.
Prom dress stores (excuse me: boutiques) refuse to let you try on dresses by yourself. You know what’s a super-delightful mix of social terror? Asking a teenaged girl to try on complicated dresses, often in states of undress, in front of stranger who is the only one allowed to lace, knot, tie, twist, or shove the girls into them.
Standing in a shower with a fisher cat would be more fun.
I could tell the very moment our high school senior daughter found herself zipped and tied into a teal beaded situation that it was wrong. The color was wrong, and the beading was … a lot. It was a rainbow of beads on a shimmery teal fabric that couldn’t quite shimmer underneath all that bedazzlement.
Also, the dress looked like a kindergartner had been left unsupervised at craft time.
“Oh, well,” I began.
My daughter stared at me. We both knew it was terrible, and one of us had to say that politely. Apparently, that person would be me. Meanwhile, the saleslady — again, the only one who could put her in or take her out of the dress, like so many jailhouse jumpsuits — oohed and ahhed.
“It’s beautiful! Look at that shimmer. I think if we tie this lace more like this …” She began unknotting one of the back ties.
My daughter shot me a look that said could I kindly FIX THINGS before she exploded into a pile of beads, tears, and obvious hunger (she hadn’t eaten in 45 whole minutes). But I was stuck. I had no script for extricating us from this. At age 50, with more than two decades of parenting experience, I had nothing to draw upon.
So, we kept at it — through a gold dress that made my daughter look like an Oscar statue, a lavender explosion that doubled as a cake topper, and finally a yellow slip situation that was mostly thread and ties and perhaps belonged at a different, more, um, adult store.
My daughter was literally melting in front of me. (Remember how I said these places are hot?) Finding a dress should be fun and celebratory. Instead, we were at DEFCON one million — and there were no snacks. Which, on that topic, who makes a prom shop without snacks? Are they insane? Spend less money on heat and put out a fruit spread to bolster these girl’s swooning sugar levels. Can I get an amen?
So, I did what any mom with a lifetime of non-applicable experiences (other then sensing impending disaster) would do.
We faked a trip to the bathroom.
Then we ran to the parking lot and went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch.
We’ll be ordering dresses online from now on, trying them on in the climate-controlled comfort of our own home and eating waffle fries as we are so moved. If you can learn from that, fabulous. If not, get yourself some fries and be ready … for absolutely anything!