Prom(inent)

Last Friday I attended my godchild's prom. Obviously, the crowd mostly consisted of teenagers and their parents and I had plenty of time to people-watch. I tried hard to think back to my own school ball and it has mostly faded from memory. I can pretty much only remember the decorations to which our class contributed and the fact that my introvert father was also made to attend...in a suit. A very rare occasion indeed. From my observer's vantage point I could only imagine how many cases of unrequited love and infatuations were going on in that room, but overall these seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds seemed way cooler and confident than I ever was at that age, the girls in particular. Or possibly, they hid their insecurities better. From my toilet cubicle I overheard conversations on subjects like "anxiety medication", so: yeah, you never know. One girl tugged me at my arm at the sink, gushing "I LOVE your dress, it's SO pretty!" That moment it felt like the ultimate compliment to have one's outfit choice accepted by, literally, a cool kid, but I was mostly impressed that she decided to tell a stranger 3 times her age. Not that I was shy myself at that age, but I simply would not have bothered. The generation 50+ mostly seemed so uninteresting and OLD to me back then that I probably barely looked at my parents' generation's outfit choices and I doubt that they were all boring and frumpy. Well, my mother for one definitely was not, so I guess it was just my (and my friends') self-centredness and superficiality that had us decide "cool" was something that died when you reached 25 max.