As ritual as the high school prom experience may be, each person’s story is unique — from disastrous to blissful, drunken to disappointing, sexually frustrating to sexually liberating.
“Tin House” magazine editor Rob Spillman decided to tap into the memories of 17 different writers for his book, “The Time of My Life,” a compilation of stories that fit into every one of these categoriesand others.
Prom may seem like a memory few people would want to revisit, but these authors (whose proms almost all happened during the 1980s) recall stories that are entertaining from the first to the 17th nostalgic story.
Some writers were “too cool for school,” as Spillman puts it, and decided to opt out for something much more alternative. Some had their sexual fantasies fulfilled that night, and many others did not. For some the prom symbolized everything they wanted to escape, while a few were able to finally discover who they were.
The descriptions of powder blue tuxes, feathered hair and Journey songs never tire as each author gives the reader a glimpse not only of that night, but into their adolescent lives as well. Some, like Pam Houston (and?) Ann Hood, use their stories as a way to reflect on the attitude of the time period, while others just want to tell a story, like Walter Kirn and his erotic experience with two foreign exchange students: “Some fresh form of international understanding that the Rotary Club, who sponsored the exchange program, might not have planned on but shouldn’t have been displeased by, so intimately did it shrink our globe.”
The specific stories are the best, whether they’re about a smart Yale-bound girl suffocating in small Alabama town or a society of druggies to whom prom means a cornucopia of cocaine.
“Could I really stand to flash back to that awkward time?” Spillman wonders in his introduction. “Would anyone else want to revisit that time with me?”
The answer is definitely, yes, not for just one story, but all 17. These writers take the best and worst aspects of high school and celebrate them, grieve over them and cringe because of them. Whether the stories are really about prom or not, the writers always recall a time that was, or at least supposed to be, the time of their lives.
