The most exceptional work that I consider my greatest achievement yet is when my high school friends and I helped organize the prom for my son's entire senior class, and I'm on track to do it all over again for my daughter. About 6 months before the event back in 2023, all of us mothers gathered at the PTA meeting. The topic of prom came up. All of us were so excited! We were all throwing ideas out there for the event. Which then led to all hell breaking loose. It was very tough to try to keep track of anything and to keep structure. A lot of us had side conversations about the color and style of our dresses, where we got our shoes, who took us, and what was trending during our time. We busted out the cheap boxed wine that I personally snuck in, and were reliving our glory days and there was no coming back to reality! Our 1st meeting about the prom was a complete bust. But OH BOY! It was something else seeing every single one of us reminiscing about our past.
Even though the PTA meeting was officially over some of us stood back… got even more hammered!! OHHH YEAH! AND I… proclaimed as their Overlord by putting on a cardboard cutout crown from Burger King. Side note: none of us ate Burger King that day. The one thing I found out the hard way is that drunk women are like small children and ants, we will find EVERYTHING! During this escapade, I came up with the bright idea of social media stock our old scum bag prom dates. If we weren't rowdy before we most certainly were now. After we got done doxing them spoofing our real numbers making prank calls and sending flowers to them acting as their lovers while their partners were home (that was my idea). We were one drink away from becoming a very stereotypic, vulgar group of construction workers from New York. That night ended with our significant others scraping us up from the floors and tables. We learned our lesson.
Once the second meeting came, we all got a better grip on reality, and the real work began. We set a time frame but once again we hit another obstacle, the theme. If California's next big earthquake were to happen it would have happened in the gym for the amount of tension that was given in that room. But we are all grown women here, and we solved it the only way we knew how…we took a vote, and there was a 3-way tie. Then I whipped out a pack of Uno cards and we hasted out our problems that way. I did not win! I was sour about it. A lot of friendships were lost that day for the next 72 hours. Roughly.
Nonetheless, all of us respected the Uno cards too much to ask for a rematch or suggest that anyone cheated. Plus, we lost about 2 meetings of productively already we didn't have any more time. We all got to work on the arrangements. Off we went to try to gather up what we needed for the big event. The theme was, “Under the Sea”. EW!
We were all split up into 3 groups. Decorations and Set up, Location and budget, and food and ticket sales. At least this time we could all pick which ones we wanted to go to. I was picked off to decorations, because let's face it, I'm Awesome! Not to toot my own horn, but I am pretty creative and resourceful. Which is what you needed to be because the budget was abysmal! Do you know how badly I just wanted to throw my hand in the air and say, “FUCK IT” and grab a bunch of random decorations from people's garages and put it all together? That’s right! I would have grabbed all their Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and Valentines Day decorations. Yeah! I was gonna prove my point. Grown-ups always told me to pick my battles and I'M PICKING THIS ONE!!!!
Someone else on the committee was like that's not “Under the Sea” themed. My argument was, “Have you seen “The Little Mermaid” before? Insider his Castle there was nothing in it! And have you seen King Triton's room? No? Either. Have. I. Who knows what creepy shit he had up in there! King Triton could have a big ass Christmas tree with a Valentine's Day heart at the top of it and an Ugly Hargitt-looking spider fucking a Thanksgiving turkey while laying an egg! YOU DON’T KNOW! It was at that moment that realized why I was SOOOO HIGHLY REQUESTED to go to the decorations team. Yes, I am resourceful, but I can't stand up and pull miracles outta my butt! You all should have known this! Nobody can! Not for the type of decorations that was being requested. WW 3 broke out, then, negotiations took place. I had a semi better budget to work with. One that was more reasonable to work with. I think I made my point clear enough and I had logical reasoning on my side along with the majority of our entire group. Finally! I got to work.
The 1st places I went to were Amazon and Alibaba. You’d be shocked at how much you can find if you hit up the right places. So, I created a wish list filled it up with ideas and got some of my inspirations from Pinterest. It was very hard to stay within budget. Some of us helped pitch in with our own money and spent our free time making some of these props. Luckily, it wasn't all that much. But we had to be careful about how much and where to put all these decorations. We did find a way to stay within budget. But our next problem was that we had no place to put it because no location was set. So, the teachers gave us a room to place everything in. It wasn't very big. It was the size of a cracker-jack box. So, some of the women employed their husbands to deal with that. 2 of them played Tetris in their free time. I was fully confident they could get the job done without ruining any of it. This took about 2 weeks to make.
The Decorations were mostly done. The food partition was the first of all of us to get done, so none of us had anything to worry about. They did struggle with ticket sales. All of our decorations team helped with that. We volunteered our time after school each day for the next month until ticket sales were where we wanted them to be. Some of the mothers were so bold as to physically chase down the cars, making the parents buy the tickets. Thank God none of us were strangers to one another or that would have been awkward. We all grew up with each other and went to high school. I mean not all of us. We only chased down known family members and classmates that we personally knew on that level. Boundaries matter…kinda.
We had all of this done but once again “the Location Group” didn't have a place yet. What gives?!? The prom date was closing in on us. The leader of this group hasn't been in for the last couple of meetings. Of course, we all banded together and went up to her 2 sidekicks and asked where was she? They all came up with excuses. The 1st time fine we all had those days. We let it slide. The 2nd time, fine! Life does get the best of us. The 5th time? No. Something is up. A small group of us got together and went over to her place. Yeah, we had our problems and our personalities didn't click. But we all held respect towards each other. Our kids are all friends with each other. We all did a pretty dam good job in raising them. So as we approached her place and knocked, none of us knew what to expect.
When she finally answered it wasn't good. Remember when 2 of the husbands were helping us place our decorations into that crack-jack box? When we left it was 2, parentally, while we were away a 3rd husband came. They all went out to the bar afterward. None of us knew that the 3rd husband had a problem with alcohol. I just wish she could have come to us and told us. It wasn't none of our business. She wasn't comfortable enough to let any of us know and that was our fault. To be fair this woman is a bitch anyways, but we are not a bunch of psychos we would have helped. Now she has to deal with family. She wasn't in any state of volunteering any of her time when she had something so serious going on.
She gave what was able to get done. Which wasn't much. It was about 30% of it of this project. Out of respect we still kept her in the loop on what we were doing. 1 member had a personal connection to a business owner who owned a nice-sized boat off of Alameda harbor. We had secured a date for that to give the deposit. Finalized the ticket sales which was in May and the big day came.
It was my idea that the team was to do an even split. Half of the team took care of the food other half was with me for decorations. We had a total of 6 hours to get this all installed take the senior class out for their prom, break everything down, and leave it as we 1st found it. I'll tell you once and I'll say it again. I am not a magician but that day with the help of everyone else we all somehow were able to pull that rabbit out of the hat. It took 1 flat hour to set up all of our decorations and I assure you none of them were random holiday decor. It took 28 mins to fully set up the tables and food in the kitchen area of the boat. Just in time for the senior class of 2023 arrival.
All of our kids had one hell of a night to remember. They all worked so hard for the past 4 years and they deserved it all. We waved them goodbye as the boat took them up and down the Bay Area. Tears of joy were shed. Naturally! A lot of us mothers stood back. For one, we sold a lot of tickets, and we needed the space for them to enjoy. Second, all of us looked like we barely survived a tornado and that was the good half. My half we looked like we just came out of homelessness from the Tendorion distract. There was a deadline to meet as long as I didn't smell like piss or CACA I didn’t care.
There were a lot of disagreements, to say the least. But despite all that, and a bunch of name-calling and catfights, we pulled everything together nicely. At the end of the day, we were all still friends who went to high school with each other…. well most of us. We still gather together and laugh about the whole ordeal. To be honest more than half of us were living vicariously through our children. There was a good portion of us who never had prom as an option during our senior.
None of us grew up rich. As a matter of fact, I, myself, was homeless for the better part of my youth. I was extremely fortunate to have gone to my prom. With the help of my besties along the way. The same besties that I worked side by side with in putting together this prom. Our kids are never going to know how hard we all bent over backward to make sure our kids had a good time. I will always consider this to be my most exceptional work. This was my 1st time helping to organize something this big, and I'm so looking forward to doing it all over again for my daughter. Only this time I'll be more prepared. I still have my Burger King crown.
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