Your Best Prom Stories Ever

Welcome to Pissing Contest, a weekly story sharing circle for the the ass-draggiest time of the afternoon on the ass-draggiest time of the last day between you and the weekend. Every week, we’ll ask a question, you’ll share stories, and we’ll pick a winner that’s featured in the next week’s post. It’s like a pyramid scheme of outdoing each other!

One high school movie trope that I hope doesn’t disappear before future generations get to enjoy it is the “crazy prom night.” You know the one. The scene where everyone does a coordinated dance routine like it’s nothing, the college radio darling band plays “Cruel to be Kind” live, the keg-hoisting after party, the nerd waking up suddenly in bed with the most popular girl or boy in school, a newly minted sex god. The morning after, when Everything Has Changed.

Real prom nights are nothing like the movies most of the time. My prom was held in the school cafeteria. We weren’t allowed to have it in the gym because 1- the floor was new and 2- there weren’t enough people in my high school to fill the gym and a half full high school gym full of girls in salon coifs and Jessica McClintock gowns is sadder than accidentally stepping on an overlooked crouton while wearing the most expensive shoes that I’d ever owned. Senior year, I went with my closest male friend at the time, the prom king from the year before because we had study hall together and neither of us wanted to go but he had to. I did no sex or drinking or drugging of any kind.

Come to think of it, the only crazy thing that happened on either prom night was my senior year date and I hitting a deer on the way to dinner and being picked up by the next car to pass by because we both knew the driver of that car, like we knew everyone else in town.

But just because I had what might have been the most boring prom experience in history doesn’t mean that everyone did. And that’s where you come in. This week’s Pissing Contest is dedicated to those proms that came close to approaching the crazy prom nights promised by teen sex comedies. Was it great? Was it terrible? Tell us all about it.

But first, let’s talk about last week’s Pissing Contest, Absurd Lies edition. Strong entries again, as usual. LadyWriter’s tale of the Roommate Who Didn’t Poop is pretty fantastic. LongRideHomeAgain5 also had a run-in with a pathological lying housemate. But the winner was this gem, by former child sociopath highfivingamillionangels:

This was actually a lie that I told. When I was four, my aunt got a divorce. My family and I visited Minnesota to visit her, and she took us for a ride in her new speed boat. It was the best thing that had ever happened to my landlocked, Iowan self.

Cut to a few months later, my mom headed out of town to a wedding in Texas. My dad stayed behind to take care of my sister and me. So from my daycare’s perspective, out of nowhere, my dad all of a sudden is picking my sister and I up every day for a week. I clearly saw this as an opportunity to exploit everyone I knew.

I proceeded to tell my daycare workers that my parents were getting a divorce, and that my dad had moved in with the lady next door. Why did I add this detail? No one knows, but apparently I knew infidelity was an issue that broke up marriages at age four. I sold my lie by actually crying and getting very upset everyday about the divorce. I was then was given rock star treatment the rest of the week, with workers buying me McDonald’s and not having to take any naps. It was probably the best week of my life at that point in time.

When my mom returned and started picking me up at daycare, the workers took her into the office and told her that they needed to be informed of any changes in the family structure. My mom said she understood and moved to leave, and they asked her point blank about the divorce (apparently, no one had thought to ask my dad about it for an entire week). She laughed and told them there was no divorce, and then they told her every lie I had told them over the course of a week.

My parents sat me down and asked if I knew the difference between a story and the truth. I said I did. When asked if what I said about my parents getting a divorce was a story or the truth, I said a story. When asked why I would do this, my response was that if you get a divorce you get a speed boat. I really wanted that speed boat.

I’m lawyer now, and I’m not sure if this confirms my early sociopathic tendencies…

“Buying the speedboat” would be a great gentle new euphemism for “getting divorce.”