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The Senior Promenade
Chanel Swint
From freshman to senior year, high school life had always been a struggle for me. Freshman year, I had just moved into the area in which the school resided, in Canton, and this was not only my first year ever in a high school, but the students, every one of them, were new faces that I was not familiar with. Sophomore through junior year were the times in which I knew people, but my overall confidence and self-esteem were still the same as they were in my freshman years.
Senior year was like the finale of my childhood years, or this is how seemed in my eyes. I wanted to make progress. I wanted to make friends, keep good grades, and also keep family life close as well, because that was the “circle of trust” I had always depended and relied on. I was very excited, especially for the main event for seniors: the prom. I had been waiting for this occasion for a long time, probably because I had seen so many sitcom teenagers go and it was glorious for them. The whole process of finding a date, buying a dress, and much more were all very intriguing to me. On May 4th, the night was ready to be started; my only concern was if I was ready.
I woke up that morning with a feeling that things just couldn’t and weren’t going to well for the main event of the year. My friends and I had planned to do all of these things for the night. We were supposed to be picked up by our limousine at a certain time, then make it to dinner at a restaurant in which we’d reserved seats for (which we didn’t wind up making it to), and then, onto prom. Apparently, everyone was running late, which I knew was going to happen because this was just the way things ran when my friends decided to group together for an occasion.
Every time we decided to spend time together, whether to go out to a nightclub or to a party, the seven of us would always have a separate, specific routines we would always stick to, regardless of the plan. So, this was the outcome I had expected to happen, which stuck in my head through the entire preparation process I had in place for this special day. I had minor things to still pick up (cameras, etc.), get my makeup and hair done, get dressed, and make sure my date was going to be on time as well. This was in a short span because, like my friends, my family had a habit of being late as well and we were up late the night before causing us to sleep in a little too much the morning after. Another delay was my uncle, Jantzen, who I had recruited to escort my friend, Thai, to the prom. He had to make sure he had identification, which had been left over a friend’s house and had been dropped off and that his three-piece was neatly ironed. The few hours before “it” began were very stressful.
Once we arrived at the Laurel Manor in Livonia, everyone who was in our group got separated. I was with three of my friends, my date, along with Jay, lost, so Thai and I took time out, specifically fifteen minutes, in search of our missing prom-mates. An argument eventually broke out between our friend and her boyfriend, who required patching up by Thai and I, again. There were fun moments in between with dancing and seeing everyone else and their dresses/tuxedos holding spirited conversations. We left feeling like we had experienced something, we weren’t sure what, but it definitely didn’t fit the definition of what a promenade was supposed to be.
After this, we had reserved rooms at a hotel, not for the usual post-prom expectations, but to just relax and soak up the special feeling that going to prom left. We were all, of course, just lying back and winding down. About eight to ten people came to visit us there that night and this made me feel good to share the night with other people who had no plans of making the night more difficult than it had already became. All in all, the night was complicated, but I must say, it made for a memorable night.
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