Thursday, March 5, 2009

The Prom Response


     Sometimes I wonder why I keep writing this blog... It's not really an English assignment anymore! I don't know whether it's because I love writing so much, or because it's fun to talk about my life sometimes.

     Pondering the, "Why do I blog?" question my first thoughts were, "because it's like my journal!" secondly "So when my kids are my age they can look back at my life laughing and say, "That's my mom?" and lastly, "In case I ever get Alzheimer's and forget all of this, someone might show it to me so that I can remember something for a few days!"

     Well now is the perfect time to tell a story that I probably won't forget unless I get Alzheimer's. It's a story that I couldn't believe, I ended up feeling about every emotion that I've ever felt in under twenty four hours... I was asked to Prom! Strangely this led to me feeling all happy, ecstatic, unbelieving (in both ways), distressed, sad, and a little guilty. Fortunately it was the good feelings that prevailed in the end.

     I was just sitting downstairs on the couch, feeling very sick. The day that I got asked to prom I had a really bad case of the cold (or something like that.) It was a Monday, but even worse than most normal Monday's I couldn't talk, and my throat killed! The day was not going well, I missed my friends, and I felt like a mess... Until I heard my dad calling my name down the stairs,
"Jojo! Jojo! That door's for you!!" Like many other people who don't want to hear those words when they feel like they're dead, I groaned in a zombieish manner,
"Dad!" I croaked,
"Please don't make me come to the door like this, I sound like a frog and I probably look like one too!" Making up a quick fib to make me come up the stairs anyway my dad replied,
"Sorry Beth, it's your Young Women's leader, and I already told her that you were here." At this point I felt a little upset and sold out. Oh well, she would be the one to suffer seeing me in my currently awful condition! Not wanting to, I dragged myself unhappily up the stairs, my dad was standing by the door that was wide open. For a moment I blinked, I saw the dark grey clouds, I saw my porch and the stairs leading down, but I didn't see a living soul outside my door. Suddenly I realized that maybe my dad had been teasing me to make me come upstairs, so I walked to the door and peered out just to see what his little joke was.

     Well there was something there! A big boulder and a tiny little rock, but that's not what interested me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a paper tied with red ribbon! Why would someone go out of their way to decorate a rock? When I bent down to pick up the smaller rock, there was no mistaking that the note wasn't the only interesting clue. For some reason there was paint on the rocks too! The large rock said, "No" and the smaller one said, "Yes," the note said something different altogether,
"Do you want to have a "Rockin" time at Prom? Let's see if you can make heads or tail of this..." There were sixteen letters scrambled up, but it took me about three seconds to configure the three words that made up his name. That wasn't all that was on the note! No, the next part made me laugh,
"Please respond using these "Rockin" materials... Thank you :)" I smiled and looked at the big "no" rock, shaking my head. How heavy was that thing anyway? What was I supposed to do with a huge boulder anyway? Shortly after discovering how heavy the rock actually was, I walked inside, content to take the note with the small rock instead. For a while I thought of how I could respond cleverly, the note was simple enough,
"Respond with these materials." But was that all? There wasn't really much fun in just following the rules! (I later learned that that might have been better!) Feeling a little stumped, my mom walked in the door after a day of work.
"Mom! I just got asked to Prom!"
"Really?" she replied, excitement radiating just as clearly from her voice.
"Yeah! Can you believe that?" I couldn't help smiling, for some reason I thought I'd never be asked to a dance.
Then it hit me, parents know everything!
"Hey, Mom! How should I respond?"
"Well, we should do something cute! Just putting the "yes" rock would be too... Simple... Do we really want that big rock?" Laughing again at how heavy the miniature boulder was, I tried to imagine lifting it. What was I going to do about it?

     About four hours later I stepped out of my little green ford focus, equipped with my nice pajamas that I'd been wearing that day, a little rock, and a bunch of rock candy. The wind was blowing really hard as my dad grabbed the huge "no" stone.
I looked at my dad in concern,
"Dad, they have translucent curtains in their front room!" My dad brushed that worry off,
"They won't see us."
When we sneaked up to the door, I practically dropped the light little rock. Not only did they have translucent curtains, I could hear voices from inside the house!
"Dad! We better hurry, they could open the door! That would be so stupid!" So without another word my dad set down his heavy load, not wanting to stand on Wes's porch another minute, I treated the rock like I'd treat a burning piece of metal, I practically dropped it on the ground as fast as I could! Together me and my dad bolted to the car, (my dad having done the honors of ringing the doorbell.)
I smiled thinking about what had been done with the rocks as we drove home. The big stone said,
"Wes, are you off your rocker?" while the little rock had a container of cherry flavored rock candy that had a note exclaiming,
"Of course I'll go to Prom with you!" I didn't think for a moment that Wes might not have seen my hastily dropped rock that said "yes" on it!

     The next day at school when I saw my Prom date, he told me a disturbing story that occupied my mind almost all day... When he had opened the door to a cheerful little ring, that little ring hand turned into sheer disappointment! He'd only seen the huge "no!" rock, I'd put the "yes" rock too close to be seen from the door! Even after Wes had taken the horrible looking sign that had said something that could be taken as terribly rude "are you off your rocker?" he didn't realize that there was something more to my response! Well you can imagine how he felt, I know how I would've felt. He dejectedly took the note from the rock and went back inside, wondering why in the world I had said no. It had been over two hours since my response when his mom made him go move the huge rock out of the way of their front door that he ended up finding my real response... Needless to say, it was probably with a little relief that he finally found that I really did want to go!

     Despite that rather sad story, I am so happy that I got asked to prom, and I'm so excited to go! The guy who asked me is so amazing, and he's one of my best friends in the whole world! No matter how everything turns out, I'm really grateful that he asked me.