Official Student Newspaper of Henry M. Gunn High School

The Oracle

Official Student Newspaper of Henry M. Gunn High School

The Oracle

Official Student Newspaper of Henry M. Gunn High School

The Oracle

Teacher proms: English teacher Jordan Huizing shares her favorite prom moments!

By: Jordan Huizing

Photo courtesy of: Jordan Huizing

The best moments of my prom were not captured in the two-page spread in my senior yearbook or any of the dozens of pictures my parents took. If my prom experience was given the Hollywood treatment, I would not even recognize it. Sure, I would remember dancing, posing for pictures and the girl who broke up with her boyfriend, but all of my favorite moments would have ended up on the cutting room floor. Here are the best of the deleted scenes:

The Awkward Asking—It was not the show of a Gunn prom request. There was no music or flowers, just an awkward moment after English class. Evan Millar was the smartest and funniest guy in my calculus class. I had known I wanted to go to prom with him for a month but had not worked up the nerve to ask him. One day after English, he waited as I gathered my things.
“Hey Jordan,” he mumbled.
“Yeah?” I responded.
“Youwannagotopromwithme?” It took a minute to understand he was asking me out.  During the seconds I hesitated trying to discern his question, his eyebrows raised steadily until they were lost behind his curly hair.
“Yes. That sounds great,” I beamed. He smiled back. Silence. Just the two of us grinning at each other like idiots until the late bell rang and we sped off to our next class.

The Dress—As a teen, I never liked shopping at the mall for clothes. Nothing in the stores seemed to fit my style or budget. I felt more comfortable rifling through secondhand stores for five dollar boots than trying on silk and sequins. However, even I was excited to find my prom dress.
At first nothing worked; it was all too typical. Flared pink skirts. Silver sparkles. Nothing felt like me. After hours of searching, I finally found it: a watercolor print of blues and greens. The best part was that it had a train. In my mind I looked like an actress on the Oscar red carpet and Joan Rivers was excitedly proclaiming that I was best dressed. The reality of the train was less starlet and more comic relief as all night, people kept stepping on it and I would suddenly jerk to a halt in the middle of a dance move.

Pre-Prom Prep—A pair of problematic hairdos. Despite the fact that we were is in the late 90s, not 80s, my friend Lauren and I both had the same hair problem: our hairdos were too big. In order to get the luscious curls I always wanted, I used Perm-for-a-Day curlers. The result was exactly what I wanted: giant curly hair. Unfortunately all that hair kept falling in my face. Lauren’s issue was all to do with height. In flats, she towered over her date by four inches. Tonight, the height difference was even more apparent because of her heels and towering updo. “He is just going to have to deal,” she muttered as she secured the last bobby pin.

Late Night Laughter—We were exhausted but could not sleep. Instead, we relived the night over and over again.
“I can’t believe Carol wore that dress.”
“And Rachel was Prom Queen!”
“Did you see Jenn and Chris? She said she was over him.”
“That was so much fun.”
“My feet hurt.”
“The look on Sean’s face . . .”
“I’m never going to forget this.”
All the scraps not glamorous enough for the films are the parts that really shine years later. I don’t remember the theme, what I had for dinner or even the music we danced to, and furthermore I don’t need to. My director’s cut of prom is far superior.

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