I’ll just bet this comes as a surprise doesn’t it? You want the whole story? All of it? Every last detail? Well just sit back, Jess. Relax. And enjoy the ride.

3:15pm - Southeast Joplin
It was blistering outside, which is hardly anything unusual nowadays. Being that we’re still in the longest and most severe drought this area has seen since the 1950’s, the presence of mass amounts of dry heat wasn’t surprising to me, nor was it to my good friend Arby.
I was parked ever so precariously between the fenders of two trucks in the parking lot of the only five star hotel within fifty miles, the Joplin Holiday Inn. I was standing at a decent distance, facing away from the hotel’s imposing structure, gazing through a black pair of sunglasses at a far different world below. Just across the street and over a broad grassy ditch was the Hammon’s Trade Center, a community building used for nearly anything that requires a great amount of space and all the regular indoor essentials like running water and electricity. The last time I had even been near this place was when Frank Peretti, a well known author in these parts, passed through on tour and spoke about Darwinism vs. Creationism. I spoke personally with Mr. Peretti that day. I happened to have read every single book he’d ever published, and by the end of the week, he had read one of mine. All of that, naturally has nothing to do with anything currently relevant and was a total waste of time reading on your part. I apologize.
The Hammon’s Trade Center was a buzz with activity, there was a big event scheduled for that night. A very big event indeed. And it was somehow the prospect of that event that had brought me here, standing alone in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn many meters away watching with some curiosity as the scene unfolded below me. There were about twelve people so far running two and fro across the parking lot with all manner of particle board and tapestry and light and sound equipment, preparing of course, for the night, and attendance of what was expected to be at least 600 people.
Arby walked out of the Holiday Inn, squinting in the sun. “Well, I’m in.”
“Excellent.” I returned.
“Uh…” He said looking around. “Where’s your car?”

When I pointed towards my car a mere five meters away, still sitting exactly where I had left it still clamped between the two trucks Arby began towards it and I followed briskly. I didn’t ask how much the room cost, I didn’t think to do so at the time, but it was nice. Compact, livable, adorned with nearly every appliance my good friend needed (which only means that the coffee maker was operational and the coffee beans were in good supply).
I had done the favor of driving my good friend to the hotel and aiding his moving into it for the single night he intended to make it his home. It was a joy just to watch his mind work. Mostly because I’ve always enjoyed watching the gears in his head rotate and clank around their numerous possibilities, but tonight it was more about the fact that his poor parents thought he was staying at a friends house, and here he was purchasing a hotel room for the night. (shrug)
Once all the stuff was unloaded, I glanced out the window at the rising excitement two stories below in the HTC parking lot. They’d started the music a while ago. I had to laugh.

4:30pm – Northern Joplin
The thing is, and I don’t know if you quite caught this, Arby and I do not attend the same school. We’re brothers regardless, but we do not both go to the same building for our educations. The reason for this is simple: He lives in Joplin. I live in Webb City. So he naturally attends the hellhole known as Joplin High School. And I attend the slightly less hostile hellhole known as Webb City High School. And all of the siblings also attend Webb City. April 22nd had been long ago scheduled by countless limo rental services and random eateries around the two cities as a night of absolute indulgence on the part of economic profit. April 22nd, both schools, Joplin High, and Webb City, were having prom.
Two cities.
Two proms.
Two hundred degrees weather.
Two million dollars in limo services, tuxedo rentals, and fine dining.
One absolutely insane night.
I was currently driving home to shower and change clothes. My dad wanted to take some senior photos today and I wasn’t exactly wearing anything classier than a t-shirt and torn jeans. That, and it was two hundred degrees outside, anything worn for more than an hour outside will be drenched. Like a law of nature. Just… one of the laws we don’t appreciate as much as the others and are more content to merely grumble about when they exact themselves upon our lives.
So I get home, pop open my door and I see my sister standing in the hallway draped in golden folds. My mother shuffles past with a camera. Wow… Prom starts in four hours and you’re… dressed and taking pictures… now? Sure enough. There are plenty of stops on this route. She had to take pictures here, at her boyfriend’s house, at my dad’s house, at school, at our grandparent’s house, at his grandparent’s house. Suffice it to say she had quite a docket ahead of her, and it was going to take some time. I smiled remembering in anti-nostalgic bliss. I remembered.
“What are you doing here?” My mother nettled.
“Hello to you too.” A reply.

5:45pm – His grandparent’s house.
My dad figured he’d kill two birds with one stone, which in this case meant he’d shoot two children with one camera. The moral ramifications of this act were actually nearer to that of killing two birds with a large rock due if nothing else to the fact that he wanted to take the pictures outside and poor Natalie’s boyfriend was in a tuxedo.
A word concerning Tuxedos. Tuxedos are acclaimed the world over for being the second most restrictive and cumbersome outfits a human being is capable of wearing without strangling himself. The first of course being a straight jacket. The nature of these suits directly limits the movement of the arms to only about thirty degrees from the waist. This, we can only assume, is because the tuxedo is also particularly good at trapping heat within its many layers of itchy, disrespectful fabrics, and to raise the arms any higher than that after any considerable period of time would effectively create a lethal biohazard no matter what amount of antiperspirant the wearer has applied. Having said that, James Bond is a phony, its hard enough to drive with any stability in one of these suits much less fight karate and shoot henchmen with one hand while holding some girl with which he is only slightly acquainted in the other while trapeze flying from one exploding skyscraper to the next.
Moving along.
He took a dozen random photos, made frequent reference to The Matrix whenever I felt the need to wear my ‘shades’ to prevent the blistering sun from burning my eyes out of their sockets, and told me often to stop picking my nose when I really don’t hoping that it would make me laugh so he could snap a photo where my face wasn’t contorted into an expression of either pure distress at the heat of the day or sheer futility while asking him to stop asking me to stop picking my nose.
Then I went home.

8:36pm – (my father’s house)
I did him the favor of uploading the digital photos to the computer for him because well… he asked me to. They were all atrocious.
That was two hours ago. For the two hours following I had sat in a chair in front of a computer screen just… farting around in my nice clothes used for the photos and drew pictures using an 3D architectural program called Sketchup. I crafted a futuristic Semi-Truck. It looks phenomenal. Took me two hours and then I sat back and gazed in wonder at my work, decided that I had completely wasted two hours of my life, shrugged, and continued texturing the vehicle.
I checked the clock. Both proms had started thirty-six minutes ago. I smiled. Arby was either having the time of his life, or, as I was more inclined to believe, was wandering around trying to figure out why he can’t raise his arms above his navel. I smiled…
I walked over to the phone and dialed his number. It directed me clean through to his voicemail, which meant that he had turned his cell phone off, and the rarity of that occurrence pushed the odds of him actually having the time of his life closer to equality with the bit about the navel. I hung up, assuming (correctly it turns out) that he was somewhere accomplishing both at once and walked back to the computer. I closed the truck, laughed aloud at how richly pathetic my existence is, and then… I don’t know why I did it. I got in the car- and drove.

9:03pm – Joplin Holiday Inn.
I parked carefully; there were quite a few cars about as it was, and I didn’t have any intention of banging into one of them. I got out and gazed across the broad ditch and street. The Center was pounding with music and all manner of freakish lights flickered and flashed from within the building. I bit my bottom lip.
And then I began to walk. Step by step, one in front of the other, across the bridge that spanned the two lots. My feet hit fresh pavement.
They were now one hour and five minutes into their prom. I didn’t attend this school; I really had no business being there. I was a foreigner. And no one there really knew me. I walked all the way across the lot to the far side of the building, the farthest side from the hotel. Then I circled back, and followed a couple up to the doorway, past the row of four police officers standing and chatting amusedly amongst themselves when they should have been paying attention to security, which was the reason they were there. I bounded ahead and kindly opened the door for the couple, they thanked me, I nodded appreciatively, and followed them in.
Prom’s are big events, needless to say. They have a tendency of being particularly exclusive. Tickets are not normally inexpensive. And to purchase a ticket you have to present your school ID a few days before the prom while in school and reserve your existence. Now as I mentioned, I don’t attend this school. Obviously I’m not going to have a school ID, which means ultimately that I’m not going to have a ticket to get into this Prom. Which is exactly why I blithely walked right through a crowd of people, past behind the ticket table, smiled at the ticketers who obviously didn’t know what to make of me and just smiled back, and walked into the main room.
I was the only male there not wearing one of the fancy straight jackets. And that fact alone was enough for me to enjoy the moment. I intended just to be there not over fifteen minutes. My intention was to find Ryan, make fun of his suit, see how he was taking the experience, and leave.
Something happened.
The Prom was unusually considerate to the various tastes present in various people who attend the school. There were three immense rooms. The first room I entered was dead center, and was ever-so-appropriately dubbed- “The Phantom of the Opera Room.” On the large projector screen at the far end of the room the movie, Phantom of the Opera, was playing silently. In the center on the room, atop a platform, was a quartet of two violinists and some other instruments playing happily. All around the room were tables with candles and random guys pacing about with trays of little… cheesy cucumber things passing people asking- “Hors duerve? Hors duerve?”
I ate an hors duerve. ^_^
There weren’t many people there, and Arby was not among the few, so I followed the loudest sound present in the compound. Whereupon I found myself standing in the collective orgy I mentioned in the last relevant article.

PAUSE:
SWEET JESUS! ITS RAINING BUCKETS OUTSIDE! HOLY CRAP IT’S A MIRACLE! Wow! Jess its nineteen minutes into Monday and there is a downpour unprecedented breaking across the city. Holy crap… The drought has been broken. There is thunder and lightning and wind… Oh so much wind. And the RAIN!!! YEAH!!!!! Oh this is good ne WOAH!
Hold on let me save this real quick. Okay. Lightning just blew open a tree in the field beyond our house. I can see it though the window. It sparked a bit and almost started burning but there’s just too much water in the air! It’s awesome! It just… came up out of nowhere in the darkness! Wow… good news indeed.
Back to our story then- UNPAUSE.

The majority of the orgy was situated in the center of the room; a DJ was controlling music from a platform with a shimmering backdrop composed of flashing images taken from the film Moulin Rouge.
I watched in awe for a few moments, and then Ryan walked in the door. “Caleb!?”
“Oh hi Ryan!”
“Caleb I’m in the jazz room. Why would I be here?”
I shrugged. “There’s a jazz room?”
“Yeah, how could you come looking for me in the orgy room? You’re stupid Caleb.”
I smiled. “Enjoying yourself?”
“I lost Stephanie. But so far so good.”

Wow. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so much rain… oh holy crap! My car windows are all open!!! ACK! I’ll be right back!
Okay… I’m all wet now. But if I’m lucky the interior of my car will be dry in the morning. It isn’t dry now, its soaking. One excellent reason to invest in a garage. I flew out the door in nothing but a pair of khaki pants and I would have hit a tree and added a new scar to the already bountiful assortment on my head if a streak of lightning hadn’t just blown across the sky as if to say- “HEY! LOOK OUT!” just before I nearly plowed into it. I got to my car and yanked the door open. Grabbed my car key and fumbled it quickly towards the ignition switch so I can start the power. There is a river flowing down the interior of my door, I’m not exactly staying high and dry either. I find the key slot and instantly- drop my key in the dark. I hear it ping against something and drop to grope around in the darkness of my floorboard for it. Like… twenty seconds later, my finger hits it, it flies up, into the ignition switch, car on, windows rolling up… up… good! Okay! Key comes back out, door flies open I bounce out, close the door behind me, go bounding across the lawn, smack my head into a thin branch belonging to the very same tree and all the rain in its leaves is suddenly upset, water explodes all over me, I reach my house door throw it open, lurch inside and close it behind me… I am soaked wet… so much for these pants I guess… But at least my car has the potential of being dry. Yay!

I follow Ryan to the Jazz Room, which is amazing. Jazz or course, is flowing gently through the air, the atmosphere has been crafted to resemble what appeared to be a combination of 1920’s New York and 1950’s France. The effect was great. Arby introduced me to a number of people I had met before and we all shook hands and joked about nonsense and they all laughed at me for just… walking into their prom and all.
I went and got a drink from their tables, had it direct served to me this fancy little thing with a mini straw. I ate some more hors duerves, voted for a member of the prom royalty, don’t know who they heck they were but I figured that as long as I was there I might as well… Ryan toddled off in search of Sir. Stephanie again and that left me standing peacefully in the middle of the Jazz Room sipping my drink and listening to a very good song.
As soon as the song ended I decided it was probably about time to move along. I walked of the Jazz Room and into the walkway between the multiple rooms where a number of suits and dresses were congregating. I was even nearly out the door when I heard a familiar voice.
“Caleb!”
I turned around and there was Bimal Patel, a coworker of mine, originally born in India, and a absolute nutter. “Hey Bimal, how are ya?”
We struck up light conversation, he introduced me to his date, I said hello, she says hello, yes, no, thank you, how are you? Doing fine, you? I’m good. Good. Yeah it is. Can you believe this weather? I know. Say Caleb. Yes Bimal, do you go to school here? Uh, no. Oh… Your date goes here then…
Uh no, not exactly that either.
He paused, perplexed. “Then how the heck are you here?”
“The same way you are, I walked in.”
“But-”
“Hold on,” I stopped him. I had just noticed how close we were to the ticket table. A conversation like this overheard by the wrong people would not bode well. Through a roundabout way, I ended up following Bimal back to the orgy room and explaining the entire ordeal. He about had a coronary.
People started asking what all the laughing was about, and soon enough I was explaining myself to everyone in the entire district! Every student that is. And they all thought it was hilarious. More people came over, turns out I knew some of them. Some were old friends I hadn’t seen in… well in ages, six years at least. And here we were now, graduating and… well it was interesting. I ended up standing in that room conversing with everyone I had forgotten I ever knew and just… talking. Someone else that I knew from work told me to come join the dance; I politely informed her that I am unable to dance and would not force the crowd to endure witnessing my attempt.
So anyway somehow I ended up kinda… dancing. And that was all right as long as there was no one rubbing up against me like tires on asphalt. And there wasn’t… so… ^_^ it was strange. Here I was, somehow, accidentally, or not accidentally, at a prom for another school, and knew more people here than I did at my own school’s prom, and… I’m dancing? I don’t dance… I don’t… do I?

11:36pm – Hammons Trade Center
I looked at my watch.
“Holy Crap! I’m sorry guys, I have to go! I can’t believe I’ve even been here this long!”
There was a cacophony of goodbyes, and I fled the room. On my way out I passed the Principal of the school, Principal Hueller. He saw me, in his school’s prom, not exactly wearing a tuxedo, and called out to me.
“Hey Caleb!”
“Oh hi, Dan!”
“Well how are ya?” Came the cheerful voice.
“I’m good. You?”
“Doing great, enjoying the Prom?”
“It’s a great prom.”
“Uh huh.” He smiled. “So how’d your dad doing?”
“He’s good. Actually he’s doing really well.”
“Well good!” Answered the absurdly happy man. “You tell him I said hey okay?”
“We’ll do.”
“See ya Caleb.”
“Goodbye Dan!”

I was gone, it took two minutes for my feet to carry me the third of a mile from the exit to my car. All the way thanking God in heaven that I knew the Dan Hueller on a first name basis. That of course was because he used to work for my dad when my dad was a principal in another school. Ancient history now of course, but the connections it leaves behind certainly are useful sometimes.

11:58pm – My Dad’s House
I stumbled in the door after shutting off my car and made my way to the kitchen for a drink. My dad was asleep at this hour, a fact for which I was grateful at the moment because I had told him I only intended to stay for about 15 minutes, not three hours. I had told the truth of course… but I don’t own a cell phone, and my return home time didn’t exactly shine with innocence. Everyone else was awake. My little brother and youngest sister were downstairs watching Terminator 2, the classic battle between nearly invincible robot and some other nearly invincible robot and plenty of random barrels of fuel just… laying around waiting to be nudged by a light tap so for no explainable reason they can blow completely apart in slow motion and allow both nearly invincible robots an awesome backdrop as they tear the inorganic crap out of each other.
Natalie and Joe were somewhere outside having fun with each other. I trust Joe immensely because I’ve known him for a while. He’s a quality guy. I also trust him because he nearly had a nervous breakdown when Natalie insisted they go somewhere without my dad’s permission. It’s amazing.
I watched a little bit of the robot movie for a while. Then I stumbled upstairs and went to bed.

And that, my dear Jessica, is how April the 22nd, ended for one tired old soul who had no intention of going to prom. ^_^

P.S: It was great talking to you the other day! Again sometime soon perhaps!
P.P.S: I finished the fine tuning and texturing of the truck I drew the next morning when I woke up! It actually looks cooler than I thought it would! And I can crash it into things! It’s awesome!
P.P.P.S: Tonight (Monday) is the Awards Ceremony and Banquet for Speech and Debate! I get free stuff! YEAH!
P.P.P.P.S: I am crafting a rather lengthy poem about this very experience. Stay tuned. For it will be posted the moment it is finished (given of course adequate access to the internet.)