Esprit de l'escalier

English
Period 3 2-24-98

Reflective Essay

It was one of the biggest events of our High School lives. Well, so far anyway. To me it was just another dance. But to my friends, it was life.
It seemed like they couldn’t talk about anything else. It was always Winter Ball this; and Winter Ball that. It was as though nothing else mattered. Everybody was stressed and overflowed with anxiety. One particular friend of mine (out of the ten of us that where going together.) completely forgot to do her homework because she was so busy making lists and phoning for reservations. She had been doing this for about a month ahead of time. She had made dinner reservations and was arguing with the rest of the group about money for the limosen. I kept telling everybody that this was just the Winter Ball, not the Senior Prom!
Us girls even went out to get our make-up done professionally, and some girls went to a salon to have their hair done. Not to mention that most of the girls had there dresses two days after the event was announced. We pretty much had a second by second schedule laid out for us for the week before the Winter Ball. From here on it was a count down.
Finally the big day came and everybody couldn’t stop for a second. There were things to do and places to go. We each were off on a mission for the perfect night. First my mom picked us up to get our nails done, then, we were off to the mall to have our trial make-up runs by professional Lancôme artists, to get a feel for what we wanted the night of the Winter Ball. I personally came out looking like I was ready for a walk down the catwalk runway. My friends on the other hand came out looking gorgeous. No worries, it was just a trial run, and I got a new make-up bag out of it. So far, so good!
There were only a couple hours before the big moment and everybody was scurrying about like ants, looking and checking over and over in their minds for something they might have forgotten. My heart was pounding and my palms were like sweat shops. I couldn’t focus because my eyes were trying to look at too many things at once.
Well, I’m not sure how, but we managed to get everybody at my house ready to go. Though two guys showed up late, but that just gave the parents some extra time to squeeze in a couple more pickers. The parents were like tourists from another country that had never been to Disney Land; the camera flashes were nonstop! Finally the guys arrived, one of them being my date! Then we were off to dinner at a very fancy restaurant were the waiters sang opera for us and this guy at another table, whom we’d never seen before sent us fancy desserts after we finished dinner, he was a really nice guy!
We arrived at the dance a little over an hour late and ended up standing in line the whole time till the limousine came to pick us up to go to San Francisco. Therefore, we never even got to see the ball itself.
After getting our pictures, (of which one of the guys almost got pounded because he got mad that a whole other group cut in front of us) we finally got to leave. To make matters worse, my friend’s date and my date (the same two that were late) had their heads hanging out the windows of the limousine like dogs. All the while they all were yelling mean things to the bums and prostitutes! Though all these let downs made for a real hard fall, the guys managed to cushion it a bit with a surprise. They had the limousine driver take us to a lookout point on Treasure Island. It was so beautiful! Then the best part was when they turned up the music and we had our own little dance right there, to make up for the ones lost by not going to the ball! I had to admit the lookout point was far better than any gym.
A number of other events happened that night which would have ruined it for anybody else in our shoes. But we just made the best of it and tried to be optimistic. Now that I look back on it, I would have been miserable if my mind set wasn’t positive.
What my friend later told me is that, to her, the ball was a big let down. “A waste of money, effort and time!” she had said. I asked her why and she said it was because almost nothing went to plan, it all went wrong. I said “Well you can’t stop the rain, and anyway everybody had fun, didn’t they?” She said, “Yeah, I guess so”. I said, “Well, that’s the first priority. And always should be when concerning the event of a dance.”