Awkward prom photos circa 1997.Thanks to a forgetful or unsentimental adolescent girl, I am now the proud owner of a corsage for the first time in 14 years.
Granted, it’s already slightly wilted and has a hideously ugly magenta sequined wristband, but it makes me smile. A certain lovely man found it abandoned somewhere between the Bluff View Art District and our downtown Chattanooga apartment and brought it home to me. It is now living in our refrigerator between a container of homemade aloo gobi and a bottle of Hershey’s syrup.
Oh, prom time. Has anyone else been waxing nostalgic as teenagers in elaborate (sometimes very elaborate) gowns and tuxedos pose on the Walnut Street Bridge?
I have. As these young men and women parade through town on their way to what is certainly one of the quintessential childhood rites of passage, they take me back to the late ’90s and my own prom-going adventures.
By the way, this Northern lady cannot get used to seeing kids done up in formalwear in April. I’m coming up on my fifth summer in Chattanooga, and it still flummoxes me. Our proms were in June.