The World According to Hugh
Mar 25 '06
The Bottom Line The 5th Amendment is soooooo handy.....
The month of March is drawing to a close, and that means in many areas, Prom time is nearly upon us.
I remember the days....teenage boys bursting with testosterone and reeking with too much cheap cologne in rental tuxedos trying their best to impress the Girls of Their Dreams in inch-thick make-up, humongous gowns and corsages the size of Audrey the Plant in "Little Shop of Horrors" dancing to loud music, drinking too much, and blowing their intestines all over their mother's new hand-crocheted sofa covers.
Ah, youth....ain't it great?
I didn't attend the Prom my junior or senior years of high school. Especially not my senior year. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. The fact that my friend Thudmore McTremors got stuck in the sunroof of his rented limo is not my fault. Neither am I responsible for how my stepbrother Al Wayce-Kidden fell into the punchbowl. I refuse to acknowledge any culpability in the action which resulted in Dudley Withers hanging from the gymnasium ceiling by his cummerbund. And when Benny Borborygmus cleared out the crowded dance floor in far less time than the average fire alarm usually takes, I wasn't there.....I was halfway home and accelerating fast. When a tray of a dozen cup cakes was flung into the face of the Prom Queen....ok, I admit I was responsible for that, but I assure you it was purely unintentional.
Honestly.....as always, it was just one of those things that happen for no apparent reason due to circumstances beyond the immediate control of Yours Truly, (voted in my senior year as the Student Most Likely To Appear on a Milk Carton)stepbrother Al Wayce-Kidden, (voted Most Likely To be Exiled on a Small Deserted Island)Thudmore McTremors, (voted Most Likely To Become a Small Deserted Island)and Dudley Withers, (voted Most Likely To Be Proof of Life on Other Planets)with a small but important role contributed by our friend Benny Borborygmus. (voted Most Likely To Contribute to Global Warming)
Somehow, myself, Al, Thudmore, and Dudley had been named to the Prom Committee in our senior year. I think the student body wanted to assure us that we had finally been accepted as fellow students and that all was forgiven after the Homecoming Dance incident with the Zamboni. (Never mind....it would just take too long, and Dudley still twitches when he hears about it. So does the high school principal....but I digress.)
Anyhow, Dudley wanted an Outer Space, astronomical style theme, with glowing stars, planets, and sparkling comets suspended from the ceiling, and said that he could create some special effects that would be both safe and, in his words, "radically awesome." The rest of the Committee took leave of their senses temporarily and thought it was a cool idea. The senior class president told me later "I'm going to have those words put on my gravestone; 'He thought it was a cool idea'".
Anyhow, We the Committee decorated the gymnasium according to Dudley's theme, and it did, in fact, look like it had been a cool idea. Then, unbeknownst to the Committee Proper, Dudley came up with his revisions to the basic theme.
Prom Night arrived, the students came and ate the buffet, drank the punch, and milled around or gyrated on the dance floor to the music provided by the band we'd hired, and all seemed well. Through all this elegance and splendor there was no sign of Dudley Withers or Thudmore McTremors. Al and I, in charge of refreshments, both recall eyeing each other uneasily, with a vague sense of foreboding. It had, after all, been Dudley who had decided to incorporate actual ice into the Homecoming Dance, and Thudmore had found the keys to the Zamboni. It wasn't my fault that I accidentally pushed the King and Queen into the swimming pool....I'd forgotten that was where that particular door led when I was trying to help them evacuate the premises.
While the band was taking a break, a spotlight trained suddenly on top of the gymnasium's scoreboard revealed Dudley, perched precariously on top of the scoreboard, megaphone in hand. "Prepare to be amazed by the star-spangled Queen of the Galaxy!" he announced.
"Time to go!" I muttered to Al, and leaped over the refreshments table and headed for the side door and out.In my haste to Exit Stage Right I failed to notice as I leapfrogged the refreshments table that the toe of my left shoe had caught the edge of a tray of frosted cup cakes and hurled it into the face of the Prom Queen.Once I reached the parking lot I saw a limousine parked near the open front door of the gymnasium, and Thudmore's head and shoulders protruding from the sunroof. In one hand he held a remote control device, in his other hand was a working model airplane that had been redesigned to look like a sort of space fairy spitting sparks from her wings. Thudmore released this contraption into the gymnasium where it promptly lost its remote control signal and began swooping and diving around the room.
From atop the scoreboard, Dudley attempted to grab his wayward and wandering creation, slipped, and would've crash-landed on the bandstand had it not been for his rather loose tuxedo cummerbund, which snagged a hook in the ceiling which was used to hang climbing ropes, and hung Dudley just as efficiently. Al took three steps back to gape at this spectacle and tripped over a dancer who had been diving for cover, and landed with a splash into the punchbowl. In trying to climb through the sunroof of his rented limo to get a better remote control signal, Thudmore became stuck in the opening and would later require a rescue team and the Jaws of Life to extricate him.
The Star-Spangled Queen of the Galaxy ran out of fuel and came to rest on the bandstand just as Benny Borborygmus, a late arrival, entered and uttered the words that cleared the room: "Uh-oh...I shouldn't have eaten that." The ominous rumbling that followed this announcement was drowned out by the general stampede for the doors and the fresh air outside.
When all was sorted out, the trampled bandaged, and the gymnasium detoxified, all agreed it was definitely a Prom Night they would remember. They also agreed they'd prefer it if Dudley and Thudmore stayed home on Graduation Day and had their diplomas mailed to them......but that's another story for another time.
Yours until Dudley tries to get a patent on his new vacuum cleaner/lawn mower fusion machine
Hugh U. Kidden
© 2006
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
hugh_u_kidden
|
|
Location: I was Here a Minute Ago; Where Did I Go?
Reviews written: 102
Trusted by: 76 members
About Me:
Um.....
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.