A Tale of Two Proms

Little Critter and I went to prom last week. Accidentally.

Not as hard as it sounds when you live in Port Elgin...

Critter and I were playing at the beach. It was late afternoon and most beachgoers had left for the day, so he was going along and systematically destroying every. single. sand castle.

The usual.

And then I saw the first evening gown.

In Port Elgin the tradition is for every prom-going grade 12 kid to meet at the Main Beach boardwalk to take pictures before heading off to the dance.

So Critter and I stayed to watch the show...

Now, there is a reason I found Port Elgin pre-prom activities so striking. It wasn't that there were a bunch of teenagers on the beach in evening gowns. Although, I might have stayed just to watch that too. There were some pretty stunning dresses.

But no, the reason I enjoyed the exhibition so much was that although the teenagers came in evening gowns, their immediate families came in semi-formal attire, for the pictures, no doubt, but it also honoured the spirit of the event. The friends and other relations did not dress up, but they were standing there in a throng of onlookers waiting for the arrival of the celebrity-for-a-day graduating class.

When I went to prom it kind of felt like a big deal because of the dress and the hype, but while some friends came to my house beforehand and we took pictures, it felt much the same as every other school dance.

Me and friends at our "pre-prom" gathering in 2007.

Where I graduated high school, in a "town" of 180,000 people, there was nothing like this town-wide tradition of community gathering: published in the newspaper and widely attended by people every year regardless of their knowing someone in grade 12 or not. Here it is a right of passage. A proud and public coming of age acknowledgement. There were little boys running around on the beach wearing dress shirts and bowties. Little girls playing on the playground beside the boardwalk watching the teenagers in evening gowns arriving and cheering for the ones they knew. It is an event those same children will grow up envying and knowing that their day will come.

I am sure the prom dress parading teenagers got into their party bus and vintage pick-up trucks, drove to the banquet hall and more or less had a good time. But whether they realize it or not, the dance was just a dance, the real ceremony and event of the day happened at the boardwalk. The parents snapping pictures. The children's envious cheering. The grandparents' teary smiles. The townspeople bearing witness. The tourists stopping to gawk. The whole community acknowledging their grand exit from high school with pomp and ceremony and sandy feet.

"Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia."

Kurt Vonnegut