40: Prom Night

This is the second in a series of recollections of the year 1985, when I transitioned from high school to college.

Photo from the Mattel website

I have a confession to make. Prom didn't excite me in high school. Oh, it was a fun night for the most part. I went four straight years (three in high school, once as a college freshman). All four dates were friends. No romantic entanglements. Dressing up was fun. My sophomore year I wore a top hat, which I kept until I graduated. I used to wear it and do impersonations of Dudley Moore from the movie Arthur. 

My senior prom was a lovely affair. I went with a girl whose boyfriend was serving in the military and couldn't attend. We joined two other couples at dinner. Then came pictures at her house. Then pictures at my house. There was a third house of pictures, too. By this point, I was starting to feel overwhelmed. Were we ever going to get to the dance? Prom always felt like one of those things where everything around the event took precedent over the event itself. The actual dance almost seemed to be an afterthought. 

This mindset likely caused me to get impatient the night of my senior prom. I wasn't vocal about it. I smiled for the all pictures. It was fun to see everyone excited. But inside I was a jumble of stress and anxiousness. I wanted to get there. So, as we were leaving the final home for pictures, I hurriedly backed out of my parking space and heard the sickening thud of my car's front passenger side fender hitting something. I hopped out and discovered I had hit a tree stump. I violated a core rule of driving that my dad harped on all the time: check your surroundings. My impatience about getting to the prom clouded my judgment. Now I had a dented fender in my Pontiac Catalina. 

The next day, a Sunday, I approached my dad in the kitchen as he was preparing a side of ribs for smoking. He was meticulous in his method, so I didn't want to disturb him. I also knew there would be no good time to tell him I had had a fender bender. I informed him of my little accident. Tried to play it off as not that bad, really. The damage was minimal. He knelt down and inspected the dent, his face red with anger. I knew he was mad. I had been careless. Fixing this car, even with insurance, would not be cheap. 

My dad upon seeing the damage

Granted, my carelessness and hurried excitement caused the accident. A quick survey of the area would have informed me that a stump was right there just asking for me to serve my fender up to it for a late night snack. No excuses. I tried valiantly to communicate my regret to Dad. I was contrite. The thing is Dad could be unpredictable with his reactions. You might approach him thinking he is going to lay the hammer down and he takes a sharp left turn into grace. No such left turn occurred that Sunday afternoon looking at the crumpled Catalina fender. He made no effort to hide how pissed he was at me. Mom tried to tell me later that he wasn't really upset with me, just the situation. That's not what it felt like, though. He chewed me out pretty good, which, frankly, I didn't appreciate. Seemed harsh and unfair. He grounded me from driving the car for two weeks. Also harsh, but, admittedly fair, even if the timing sucked. The last two month of my senior year was hardly a time to be without wheels. Since he expressed his anger, I expressed mine. We argued for several minutes.

Now, my dad and I didn't argue much at all. During my teen years I could count on one hand the number of times I openly showed any frustration toward him at all. Something about that moment with the fender and his disgust with me over it didn't set right. I told him how I felt, matching his tone. It...didn't land well. That Sunday afternoon, as the argument ended, a kind of Cold War settled in between us. We were cordial with each other. No outright hostility. I certainly wasn't openly disrespectful. But a tension formed. It would fester over that summer of 1985 and come to head on my 18th birthday in July.

More on that later.