Written by Jennifer Gao

Prom askings don’t always go according to plan, and English teacher Diane Ichikawa’s was no exception. For Ichikawa, having a date was mandatory to attend Prom. “I did not get asked my junior year and I did not know anybody to ask, so one of my good friends and I went to a movie and dinner [instead of Prom],” she said. “My senior year I had a boyfriend who went to a different school across town. I wanted to see if we could go to my prom, so I asked him.”

Ichikawa planned out a big asking at a beach in Carmel. “We packed a picnic, I wrote a note and attached it to I think it was a stuffed animal, and he opened up the note and he looked at me and was like ‘Uh, I’ll think about it’,” Ichikawa said, “I thought it was going to be an ‘I’ll think about it, yeah of course’, but it wasn’t—he actually really needed to think about it.”

Her boyfriend’s vague response lead to an awkward remainder of the picnic, but they ended up at Ichikawa’s prom, which took place on the wharf in the Double Tree Hotel in Monterey.

Ichikawa felt that her high school prom experience was fairly mediocre. “It was just a dance; it was not nearly as nice as the ones that you guys have,” she said.