Squad Prom

There is a small but significant percentage of wealthy people in the Hometown High student population. Sometimes people would say to me, "You're so lucky! Your school must get a ton of money from those rich parents."

Maybe the rich parents give money to Hometown High, but if they do, they don't give it to the science department, with its outdated Bunsen burners and goggles. They don't give it to the band, which is obliged to throw a big swing dance fundraiser every year to earn their keep. And they don't give it to the musical theatre program, with its inferior sound system and tiny stage. Possibly they give money to the athletes, who had a new weight-lifting room my junior or senior year. But that's it.

This lack of funding is particularly evident in the school dances. Four of the six annual school dances are held in the gym, decorated by the tireless student body officers.

Even though these gym dances are a little ghetto, I still had lots of fun attending them when I was in high school. One of my favorite memories was at the Halloween dance my senior year. I went to the bathroom. When I came out of the stall, a junior boy dressed as Draco Malfoy and a junior girl dressed as Harry Porter were standing near the sinks.

HARRY POTTER GIRL:(to me) Wait right there! Wait right there!

She went out in the foyer. The boy dressed as Draco Malfoy started sobbing over the sink.

HARRY POTTER GIRL: (bursts in brandishing wand) Sectusempra!

I started laughing. They were reenacting the Harry-curses-Draco-in-the-girls'-bathroom scene from Half-Blood Prince!

So that was dances when I was in high school, but these days all is not well in the land of Hometown High dances.

At our cousin's baby shower a few weeks ago, Baby Sister mentioned Squad Prom.

LITTLE SISTER: Wait, Squad Prom? What's that?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Oh, I remember you mentioning this. What happened?

Baby Sister told us the story of Squad Prom.

So a few months ago, one of the kids with rich parents in the current crop of Hometown High students decided that he didn't want to go to prom.

Based on what Baby Sister said and what I've gathered from social media, it sounds like the kid was influenced by a combination of wanting to make the administration mad, wanting to make the the student body officers mad, and wanting to not follow the rules of prom such as no drinking, smoking, sex, moshing, grinding, or coming clad in a negligee or a shirtless, oiled torso. So he decided to throw his own prom. Paid for by his parents. Called Squad Prom.

Talk about a temper tantrum revolution.

We, the squad, hold these truths to be self-evident, that not all proms are created equal and ours will be better.

Essentially.

Well, that's one thing. But it wasn't enough to hold their own prom. They decided to set up said prom in direct competition to the school prom. Same day, same time. They wanted everyone to come to Squad Prom and not go to Hometown High's prom at all. So they advertised it at school. They texted people. They create a hashtag and plastered it all over Twitter. They drove around the school parking lot, yelling and throwing fliers out the car windows.

Other students at Hometown High were mad. They complained that if prom weren't well-attended, the school would think that students didn't care about dances and would cancel them in the future. Rants were posted online. Sides were taken. Lines were drawn, crossed, redrawn and crossed again.

At this point in the story, Little Sister and I were in hysterics. This was like a Disney Channel movie. Except in a Disney movie, the Squad Prom kids would be portrayed as the underdogs, when really, they were potentially ruining future school dances for everyone else. Which, granted, wouldn't be the end of the world (because school dances aren't a big deal), but at the same time...why would anyone ever feel the need to do something like that?

We got on Twitter and looked up the #squadprom hashtag.

People were saying things like "#squadprom was so lit!" and "#squadprom will go down in history!" And there were a ton of photos of them at their parent-funded venue (which was way nicer than the school's prom venue).

LITTLE SISTER, AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: So what happened at the school prom?

BABY SISTER: Actually, it was way better than normal prom because all the stupid people were at Squad Prom! But now the juniors are saying they're going to Squad Homecoming. The school says if they keep throwing squad dances, they'll cancel normal Homecoming. So I don't know what they'll do, because parents won't be able to fund every school dance.

We shook our heads at the folly of youth. Then, deciding we were too cool for the normal baby shower, we took some #squadbabyshower selfies.