186: Prom

This episode explores the universal and personal experiences surrounding the high school prom, focusing on the town of Hoisington, Kansas, where a tornado coincided with the prom night.

1. Prom night can symbolize a pivotal moment of transition from youth to adulthood, often encapsulated in a single, memorable event.
2. The impact of unexpected events like the Hoisington tornado can profoundly alter the communal and individual significance of traditional rites.
3. The episode explores the contrast between the celebratory intentions of prom and the harsh realities imposed by life’s unpredictability.
4. Personal narratives from the episode emphasize the community's resilience and the unexpected lessons learned through hardship.
5. The storytelling captures the universal aspects of high school experiences while grounding them in a distinctly dramatic context.

1. Tornado Prom

The chapter recounts the surreal experience of Hoisington's prom night when a tornado struck without warning, juxtaposing a typical high school celebration with a life-threatening crisis. The segment includes poignant reflections on how the event forced students to confront mature realities unexpectedly.

• Susan Burton: "Prom actually feels grand in Hoisington. The day of the dance, the girls drive down to great bend and get their hair done."

1. Reflect on past experiences: Use personal or communal challenges as opportunities for growth and understanding.
2. Prepare for emergencies: Always have a plan for unexpected natural disasters, especially in areas prone to such events.
3. Value community: In times of crisis, leaning on and supporting your community can provide strength and resilience.
4. Maintain perspective: Understand that events like prom are significant but keeping perspective on their importance can be grounding.
5. Cherish memories: Use significant life events as anchors for memories but also as lessons for the future.

While the seniors danced at Prom Night 2001 in Hoisington, Kansas—a town of about 3,000—a tornado hit the town, destroying about a third of it. When they emerged from the dance, they discovered what had happened, and in the weeks that followed, they tried to explain to themselves why the tornado hit where it did. Plus other stories that happen on Prom Night.

Prologue: A high school boy explains how prom is the culmination of his effort to get in with a cool group of people. (5 minutes)

Act One: Susan Burton reports on Prom Night 2001 in Hoisington, Kansas, a town of about 3,000. While the seniors danced, a tornado hit the town, destroying about a third of it. When they emerged from the dance, they discovered what had happened, and in the weeks that followed, they tried to explain to themselves why the tornado hit where it did. (25 minutes)

Act Two: Host Ira Glass talks with Francine Pascal, who's written or invented the plot lines for over 700 books for teenagers in the various Sweet Valley High series....Sweet Valley Kids, Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley University, Sweet Valley Senior Year. She explains why a prom story is a must for teen movies and TV shows. (6 minutes)

Act Three: For a more typical view of prom night, we hear prom night at Chicago's Taft High School. (9 minutes)

Act Four: In this act, we argue that the epicenter of prom genius—the place where America's prom future is being born—is the town of Racine, Wisconsin. In Racine, they've added one ingredient to prom that takes it to a whole new level of intensity. Reported by Wendy Dorr. (10 minutes)

People

• Full names of primary people discussed: Susan Burton

Content Warnings:

• None

Elena

Support for this american life comes from indeed, indeed is driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isnt to search at all. Dont search match with indeed and indeed doesnt just help you hire faster. 93% of employers agree indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites, according to a recent indeed survey. And listeners of this show will get a dollar 75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@indeed.com.

American thats indeed.com american. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire. You need indeed. It was junior prom.

David State had ditched him and he wasnt doing so great. As he walked to get some cigarettes, he explained to me that the prom was the culmination of a three year campaign on his part to get in with a cool crowd, a mostly white crowd. It began when he arrived at Lincoln Park High School. See, there's a story between, right, since I was a freshman, when I freaking Lincoln Park, I was like total nerd geeko, right? So of course I see all these glamorous, beautiful girls.

I'm like, damn. Only dream of having them, right? Or just even like taking them out on a date, not even doing anything physical with them, right? Third year, first junior prom ever. Linkin park.

Most gorgeous girl in school. Ask your prom. She says yes. So, well, God damn, you know. Cause I changed a lot since sophomore year.

I got into this crowd and stuff, and they just changed. I changed my speech, my dress and all that stuff. I'm still the same person. Nice change. I'm just, this is a popular crowd.

I'm just popular now.

So I end up going, right? And I know she has a history of being, like, incredibly moody. She's so gorgeous. Take her anyway, you know, just because, I mean, if I go with her this year and she's so gorgeous, then all these other girls gonna say, damn, I have to go with him now. If he's good enough for her, he's definitely good enough for me.

Susan Burton

I'm like, fine. That's gonna boost my rep a little bit. And I'll tell you this, I wanted something physical. I wanted to either just fool around with her, meaning kiss her, kiss her, feel her up or whatever. Even more, you know, go all the way or whatever.

Elena

But I wasn't counting on that. I was here to have fun, and that would be like a nice feature to it. That'd be a bonus, you know? But I wasn't pushing anything. Sure enough, her and her alleged best friend get into a fight, and here I am alone with my rum and coke.

The promise. We don't make kids go into the army in this country. We don't make them go to college. We don't make them get married. But if they're still in school when they're 18, they collide with the impenetrable fact that is the prom.

If they go to a school with a junior prom, they get it twice and then they have to take a stand. Go, not go. Have some kind of experience. Use it to try to climb to a new group of friends. Use it to try to get the girl.

Just try to get through it. The stakes are weirdly high for a one night thing. Good luck.

As we get older, I think a lot of people tend to roll their eyes at the idea of prom. Cause years later there's something about it that just feels embarrassing. Especially if you went. The clothes and the corsage, corny music, just the whole thing. I'll speak for myself.

It's embarrassing to think how thrilled I was to go out that night. How the whole thing seemed fraught with possibility to me and to a lot of us. And so today we're in the midst of prom season. Right now we bring you four stories of the prom. Let us understand it as adults, like one of our program today, tornado prom.

What happens when a natural disaster strikes the same night as the unnatural disaster? That is the promise. Act two, save the last dance for me again. Francine Pascal, the nominal author of 700 books for teenagers including the Sweet Valley High books explains why teen stories always have to end at the prom. Act three, only two things are certain in death and tuxes.

In this act, you can experience over the radio a complete typical prom. And, oh, just look at the time. That only gives you half an hour to find a date. Fact four, only one thing missing is the epicenter of prom. Genius is the place where the prom future is being born.

The town of Racine, Wisconsin. They have added one ingredient to the prom that takes it to a whole new level of intensity. One magic ingredient. Find out what it is. Stay with us.

From WBEC Chicago, it's this American life. I'm Ira Glass.

Deck one, tornado prom in Hoisington, Kansas. Years ago, a tornado hit on prom night. Hoisington is a small town of about 3000. Nobody at the prom was heard. In fact, nobody at the prom even knew it happened.

But when the prom was over, a third of the town was destroyed. One older man was dead and the seniors were left to figure out what to think of the whole thing. With so many tornadoes hitting around the country. Right now, we are revisiting that story that happened in 2001, back before every high school student was equipped with an iPhone. On Friday nights, the teenagers in Hoisington drag main street, or they go to a party at someone's house, and the boys shoot baskets in the driveway and the girls jump on the trampoline.

Susan Burton

Sometimes the parties are out in the country at ponds. It sticks in the sticks, they tell me. Since it's Kansas, there's weird weather, high winds that make the power flicker on and off. They get a lot of tornado warnings, but they never thought one would actually touch down here. Hoisington just seemed too boring to be visited by a natural disaster.

Elena

It's just like, nothing happens in Hoisington. Like, everyone says that. It's like, oh, there ain't nothing doing Hoisington. Nothing happens here. So just like, why would a tornado come here?

Susan Burton

Prom actually feels grand in Hoisington. The day of the dance, the girls drive down to great bend and get their hair done. At main attractions, they all wear long gowns. They shop for them at a store in Wichita that won't sell the dress you buy to anyone else in your town. The dresses are elaborate and, like all prom finery, extremely difficult to explain.

It's, like, black and it's fitted, but when you look at it from other directions, it's silver and royal blue purple. It was shiny. There's, like, two straps that go in the back and they cross. I don't know. It's hard to explain.

Like, people would ask me what it looked like, and it was so hard to explain to them because it's just so unique. All very long, like, tight. Not really. Any of them didn't have, like, a tight dress or, like, long. They were just, like, just one sheet.

Elena

Like, I guess. I really don't know about dresses, but there was just, like, one cloth.

I think prom's more of the female, you know, it's her night, you know, most ladies are like, you know, want prom to be everything, you know? So I think they wanted it kind of to be a night they'll never forget, and some of them got it. I mean, I went in through lots of prom magazines, just looking up themes and stuff, and we had all the whole junior class vote on which one they wanted, and they came up to be lost in the moment. So it's kind of ironic. We really were lost and what was happening.

Susan Burton

We didn't know what was going on, and so, I mean, and after it, we're just. It's lost what happens when a prom meets a tornado? When two events that often end in disaster collide? The day that both the prom and the tornado came to Hoisington, everyone tells me with ominous foreshadowing. Started out sunny, but looked stormy by dinner.

It was sprinkling by the time everyone parked their trucks outside the knights of Columbus hall on main street, they ducked and ran inside to prom. In the back row, stand on your tiptoes. Okay, that's good. That's good. Back row tiptoes.

Here we go. It was just crowded with people taking pictures. I mean, it was like I was at a basketball game or something. It was like ch ch ch ch. Hurted my eyes after a little bit.

This is Sean. He's a junior. He videotaped the promise partly so he could show his mom what she missed. From here, he and his classmates tell the story. It took a minute before people, you know, finally started dancing and stuff.

Elena

There's Diane, dancing buddy. There's Heather. We got there late, so, like, as soon as we got, like, there, right at 08:00 so as soon as we got there, the dance party started. So we just started dancing, and we danced for, like, an hour or so, you know? Yeah, about an hour.

Susan Burton

And then the light started flicking off and on. Like, it didn't, like, flicker. It, like, kind of went off, and then it come back on, you know, and people just. Was. Some people, like, my friend Tiana's kind of a scared of the dark, you know, so she's freaking out.

But some people is just fun, you know, so normal blackout thing, you know. There'S just a lot of people screaming and yelling, you know, just. Yeah, acting like fools and stuff. I was, too. And I think I yelled at one time, hand me that beer, break out the keg and stuff like that.

Elena

And the lights went back on. Everybody just kind of looked around and went on their way, you know. Wasn't even anything big.

Susan Burton

The door kept opening, and we knew we could hear. It was really. We knew it was getting windy outside, and someone had said that it had started to rain, and people would go out and look, and it was like rain was just coming in horizontally. It was just blowing down the street, and we didn't think anything of it. It was just, oh, you know, we have to go out in this later.

Didn't think it was as bad as what it was.

They were playing I'm a survivor from Destiny's child, and that was, like, the next to last song before the lights blacked out.

Who would know, you know? I mean, who would have thought that that song would be playing one of the last times that a tornado right before it ripped through our town, you. Know, went up the second time, and everybody just kind of stood around and everything waiting, and, you know, we're like, hurry up. Turn the lights back on. Come on.

Elena

This sucks. We're standing around at prom, you know. DJ's came out and they had, like, a long stick, and they were trying to get everyone to do, like, a limbo just to keep us entertained. And why the lights were out because they couldn't have any music or anything like that, so they had a line of limbo going through. And that was when our principal told us that we needed to go downstairs.

Shortly after the lights went out, the door of the knights of Columbus then was basically sucked open. This is Mike Knowlton, the principal of Hoisington High School. At that point, I walked over and you could feel the pane glass kind of vibrating a little bit, and it subsided a little bit. I stepped outside, and as I stepped outside, an ambulance was coming down the main street with the PA saying, get in the basement. KSN news, here's a break.

Susan Burton

We've got bad beer outside. They're locking us in. We can't get out to get more beer and drugs. People are scared. The wind is blowing and the rain is coming down hard.

Everybody go to basement. Take shelter. Take shelter. Get away from the windows. Get in your mattress.

Pull a mattress over your head. Secure yourself. This is serious, folks. I'm out. Tornadoes coming.

Elena

I was just taping, and she just came up and just started saying that stuff. But I talked to her afterwards, and she didn't. She had no idea, you know, there's tornadoes. She feels bad for even saying that stuff. So it was like, whoa, she was running on the money.

Susan Burton

This is the best prom ever. Ever. The basement right here. Oh, my God. I can't see.

There you are. I mean, when I wasn't looking in the camera, it was like, pitch black with, like, two flashlights in the distance. She could, like, barely see someone's smoking down here. Are you serious? I can smell it.

Where's it at? It was dark, and we were having trouble seeing everybody. And Mister Knowlton said that we weren't allowed to go. Our principal said we weren't allowed to go upstairs until the cops came and told us that everything was okay. And I asked him, I was like, well, are we down here because of hailstorm, thunderstorm, tornado?

What's going on? He's like, well, right now, everything would be speculation. Is it hail or just tornadoes or what? Right now, it'd be speculation.

Elena

We will keep you here until it's safe to turn you loose, and then we will make a decision on whether to reschedule prom or what.

I made the call that prom would be canceled. You know, 2 hours later, I looked back on that statement. So I thought, boy, that was a silly statement that didn't even have to make that statement. There wasn't going to be a kid there that wanted to stay at prom. It just.

It just goes to show how little we knew. And we were four blocks away from. The storm, and so that's when, like, people would have cell phones. They started getting on those, and a lot of rumors were flying through, and people were saying, I mean, it was like, okay, all of a sudden, someone pops up and says, zach, your house is gone. Or, like, jacob, your sister's house is gone.

Susan Burton

And like. And then it was like, all of fifth street's gone. All of 6th street's gone. I was just like, don't jump to conclusions, because you don't know what's true and what's a lie and what's a rumor. Because there was rumors flying everywhere.

That dairy Queen was gone, and everybody that was in it was dead. And, I mean, that was where we were gonna have breakfast at after. After prom. There's people crying. Cause no one can.

We can't leave. We don't know where our families are at. We didn't know how to get ahold of anybody. It was. I don't even know if I can explain the feeling.

Just like I was. I was just. It was just so scared. I was. It was almost.

You couldn't really even talk. All I could do was cry. I just. That's all I could do. It's pretty sad.

I'm not ready to cry, so I'm gonna turn around again.

Elena

All of a sudden, everybody just started walking upstairs, you know, and it was still dark, you know, and I was looking for my coat because I had taken it off and set it on the chair. And me and this other guy, Luke Patton, we both had the same looking boutonniere. So we were looking at it, and he was like, that looks like mine. And his girlfriend was like, yeah, that's yours. I can tell by that one.

I was like, are you sure? He's like, I don't know how the canon chew got in here, but you can have it. So I kept it, and I was looking for it, and I couldn't find it. I couldn't find it. And then I heard somebody yell my name and I thought, that's my brother.

No, what would he be doing up here, you know? And then he's like, well, yeah, go talk to mom. So I figured, oh, she's overreacting. She wants to talk to me, make sure I'm okay. And I could kind of see her, you know, there's a little bit of light coming from the doorway where you can make out somebody's figure.

And I could come to tell it was my mom. So I walked up to her, she started crying and my sister was sitting there crying. And I just kind of was like, oh, no.

The last time I heard her sound that worried and scared was when my dad died. That was the last I heard my mom sound that bad.

I kind of sat there and I didn't believe it at first because I was like, tornado, you know? What tornado? There's no tornado. We didn't know about any tornado. I didn't think there was because I didn't see it.

You know, I was right here, you know, how could there be a tornado without us knowing?

Susan Burton

Will and his mom went outside. Everyone from prom was standing on the sidewalk. Main street looked fine. None of the buildings seemed to have been touched. The air felt nice and cool.

At first will thought the cars were pockmarked, like from hail. But then he realized the storm had just covered them with little white flowers. No one like actually came up and said, oh, it was a tornado. It was. I was like, there's someone saying like him, come here, you.

Elena

Come here, you. Come here. It's weird cuz you were like kind of listening for your name if it was coming up. But it was like, it was just like that one row is straight, like 6th and 7th. I mean, that's what, like all the kids they were naming off that lived on that show street.

I was like, wait a minute, you know, did it hit up there?

Oh, there was like so many fire trucks and so many cops, ambulances. I mean, they were just going to that north, just kept on going north. They didn't turn or nothing. They just went north. And they kind of like lit up the whole town when they went through.

And then you look on the other side of town, it's like totally dark. It was weird because it was like pitch black basically down there. It's kind of like if you drove north, you're gonna fall like into a black hole or something.

We drove around for a while and I couldn't believe when I saw like houses that I used to know, you know, like the one house had, like, a big chunk ripped out of the top of it, you know, like a T. Rex walked up and just took a bite out of the top of the roof and stuff. It was. It was pretty amazing. My cousin had a separate car from my aunt, so he took me as close as he could get me to my house.

Susan Burton

And then I just got out and I ran to my house. I was jumping over power lines and tree limbs and everything in my prom dress and flip flops, but I got there. This is Elena. She lived on 6th street, right where the tornado hit. My mom, she cooked that supper that night.

She had the crystal pitcher of, like, iced tea, and it was sitting on our table. It was still fine after the tornado. It was still sitting, like, right there on the exact spot on the table. It hadn't been touched at all. And the roof was completely off.

Kitchen. You could stand in our kitchen and look up, and you'd be looking up at the sky. That night, kids walked all over Hoisington with flashlights. All the places they could think to go, the dairy Queen, the bowling alley, the grocery store, the football field, were gone. It wasn't just that something had finally happened in Hoisington.

Hoisington had become an entirely different town.

Where we're in right now is ground zero. My house is in ground zero. I arrived in Hoisington about two weeks after the tornado, and Elena took me on a tour. Everything is normal on this side. You can't even tell anything ever happened.

Whole sections of the town were still perfect. There were people on porches and shiny party balloons tied to mailboxes. Then we crossed over. A lot of the Westside had already been bulldozed. Now it was just dirt and basements and house parts.

Someone's front steps or a kitchen cut away like a room in a dollhouse. And of course, this is Kansas. The main street in town is a red brick road. Lots of people had spray painted their cars and houses and boarded up windows with references to the wizard of Oz. Everybody, like, writes stuff about Dorothy and Toto on their houses.

Like, our house, we had all the windows boarded shut, and we had all kinds of sayings on there. We had, like, we're coming for you, Toto. And, like, dear Dorothy, I miss you. If somebody finds me, please pack me and send me to Oklahoma. Love, Toto.

To the kids in Hoisington, it started to seem like the tornado made choices. Why would it knock down a house, but not even break the glass on a framed photograph of bridesmaids in purple dresses? All kinds of weird stuff that's happened. Like when they went into Adam's room. The only thing that they found left in the room was the movie twister.

I don't know. Some people found a prom glass in their cupboard, and it's from 1963, and they didn't have any kids. They were an old couple, and they didn't have any kids that graduated that year, and they have no idea where it came from, but they found it in their cupboard.

Some teenagers started to look for a logic in who was hit and who was spared. I'm told that the junior class got it the worst and that it's a known fact they've been jinxed since the fourth grade. Addie, who lost her house, and Brooke, who didn't tell me that Addie is bad luck and Brooke is good luck. That they joke about this all the time, that even at the moment the tornado destroyed Hoisington, Brooke was winning a prize at prom. Will took the whole thing a lot harder.

Elena

Seems like, you know, that we just can't get a break, that we just can't get lucky. Will's dad died several years ago, had a heart attack on his birthday. And then last fall, the house will had lived in since he was little got too expensive for his mother, and the family had to move out. The house was on the east side, and the tornado didn't touch it. Even still, when I drive by there, I look at the house and wonder what it would have been like if the tornado hit and we still lived at that house, you know?

And I wonder, if I still lived there, would the tornado have come that way and hit us there? Cause maybe it was hit because there was somebody that I was going after. And if I did live in that other house, that maybe I would have. The tornado probably would have came out over on the east side, that it probably still would have came through and done something to the house just the way I believe.

I think it was meant to teach me a lesson, you know, in a couple ways. Like, one way. I always thought, oh, it'd be cool if we had a tornado in this town, you know, have something exciting going on. And then now it's like, well, here, have a tornado. And now how do you feel about it?

Susan Burton

Elena felt like she caused the storm, too. Friday night, before the tornado, me and Addy, we were driving to Claflin to hang out with some friends, and I was like, you know, Annie, I was like, I've never seen a tornado. I was like, I really want to see one. Sometimes she's like, oh, Annie, you know, they're really scary. She's like, I've seen a couple, you know, but I've never actually been in one.

I was like, I know. I was like, wouldn't that be crazy, you know, if it really did happen, then, like 24 hours almost exactly later, you know, the next night, a tornado comes and takes out our houses. It was pretty freaky. I was like, oh, my gosh. I remember after the tornado when I got home and I was crying, I was hugging my mom and I was like, I swear I made this happen.

And my mom was like, no, Lenny didn't make it happen. But I mean, it's pretty scary saying I never seen it. I really want to see him the night before it takes out my house.

I asked Sean if he thinks the storm singled people out. I don't think so. Really? Because if that was true, they came straight to my house and would have found me at prom. But it didn't.

Elena

I don't know. I have like, bad luck all the time. I mean, like two sisters. The first one was little. She said, oh, I'll go to promise you, and she dumps me.

Her sister asked me to promise. She's like, well, I don't want to go with you. I want to go someone else. So I was like, I got rejected by sisters. So it's like, so it should have found me and like sucked me up by myself just to be like, hahaha, you know, and then hit my car and then hit my room.

So just hit my whole house, just my room in my car. So I had scratched that bad luck idea with some people. It was just a twist of fate that that happened.

Susan Burton

That was definitely the prom of all proms. I mean, it was a horrible, horrible experience to go through, but it was definitely a prom of all proms. I mean, it's like something that everybody's gonna remember. Like some people, they look on prom, you look back on prom and it's just a prom night, you know, everybody knows what prom happened, you know, they know what's gonna happen to prom and they know what prom is, you know, but now we can say what happened on prom night and it's a really big event now, you know, I guess it's one that you'll never forget, really. I mean, you think of prom night now you think of tornado.

I mean, everybody's gonna remember it for that. Usually the story of prom is one of disappointment. You're in the bathroom crying during the slow dance or you throw up at the hotel room party. Or you go home feeling silly for having been so excited about something so meaningless. The teenagers in Hoisington got the kind of prom story everybody wants.

They got a legendary prom the night that actually did change their lives. I mean, it's like, I went to prom my sophomore in junior years, and it was a dance. It was a prom. It was nice, and it was fun to get all dressed up, but it was like a prom that taught a lesson. You know, it wasn't just.

It became our cars and clothes and weren't so important and family and friends. And it taught a big lesson about humanity, I think, to everybody there. Everybody had a new perspective of life. Walking out of that prom like we're. In like a whole different world and just having fun when actually outside is like totally opposite.

Elena

People are in their basements, stuff's falling down, houses are gone. No, people are actually losing stuff. And we're in the prom, still dancing when the tornado hits. And after it hits, we're still just, you know, just free of everything, just like still having a good time. It's like totally different when you walk outside.

Like, you step out of the safe zone and you go into another world where reality hits.

Susan Burton

Prom doesn't usually chaperone you into the world so quickly. Suddenly a lot of kids in Hoisington have to act like grown ups. Will's going to college in the fall, but he sometimes thinks it would be better to get a job on an oil rig, give the paychecks to his mother. A senior named Zach actually pulled his parents out of the rubble of their own home on prom night. But everyone's looking forward to rebuilding, and they're all getting used to the idea that anything can happen, even in Hoisington.

Elena

Sus Merton is a producer on our show. Her podcast series, the retrievals just got nominated for Peabody. If you haven't heard that, you can find it wherever you get your podcast. Podcasts. Since we first broadcast our story back in 2001, Will, the teenager talked about how doomed he felt, how his family couldn't get a break.

His father died and whose house was destroyed. He died that July in a car accident just a few months after prom and just weeks after our story was broadcast. It's kind of a grim way to end this, but that's what happened.

Sometimes things go wrong. Even at the senior prom. One stormy night in this little town, everything got turned upside down. Letting me set the scene. I was dancing where the prom queen just when shoulda kissed her, she got carried off by a big old twister tornado on the dance floor.

Tornado on the dance floor coming up. They've been juniors in high school since the year 1982. So when they say, and this is a direct quote, we have been dreaming about prom night for years, they mean it. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This podcast is supported by washington.org dot.

Susan Burton

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Elena

The bookstore little district books. What did you appreciate the most? Really? Just like the genuine kindness of everyone. That I encountered this weekend, why should people visit DC?

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Susan Burton

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Elena

This is American life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose some theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program as we head into May and prom season, stories about the prom, we've arrived at act two of our program. Act two saved the last dance for me again.

So pretty in pink and Carrie and back to the Future and the Cosby kids and Buffy and too many other movies and tv shows to name. They all eventually end up at the prom. But why? Why the prom? Why is it so omnipresent?

Well, for answers, we turn to Francine Pascal, who has written or invented the plotlines for 700 books in the Sweet Valley High series, which, of course, is the adventures of Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, twins and, well, seemingly permanent high school juniors. She spoke to us from her home in France. Well, I have to tell you that the prom is probably the quintessential glory of high school. It's the moment that comes closest to the romantic vision of life. I think it's repeated again only one other time.

Susan Burton

And that would be marriage. I mean, it's that important in the high school life, in the teenager life, in that pre life, before adult. That's interesting. So, as in a traditional drama where you'd want the characters to end up in marriage, if you're writing about teenagers, all you've got is the promotion. That's about it.

That's right. And out of the 700 books, prom is mentioned in at least 500 of them. But I would say there's probably a major goal in almost 30, 35. You mean 35 or so books actually take place at the prom? There's an actual prom in them?

There is a prom as the plot goal or a very important part of the plot. I can give you just ideas of it. There's, I think in the second book, I did a plot about who is going to be the king and queen of the prom. And there was, you know, rigging the election and just to give you an idea, plots on getting a date for the promise, somebody who has no date for the prom, the wrong date for the prom, the wrong date that turns out right for the prom. And I know there was a plot about this poor girl.

Her brother had to take her. I mean, that's permanent trauma. And then there's the other thing where there's no money for the prom dress. Then there's the one about, you think he's going to ask you, but he asked someone else. And every.

I mean, when you're. When you're involved in as many plots as I am, you know, they begin to fall into some categories. And there's things like the bet plot. The what plot? The bet wager.

Like a wager. A bet plot. Or the pledge plot where the boy asks a girl on a bet to go to the prom. Or the pledge is he has to ask the least popular girl in the class to go to the prom. And then she finds out, and then he really wants to go with her, but it's too late because she's furious.

And that takes the whole book to settle down. It seems like one of the common prom plots is that the prom forces a choice between potential dates, and often it'll be the good looking, unattainable boy or girl is one possibility. And the smart, funny best friend is the other possibility. Exactly. Exactly.

Abuse, that sort of thing. There's also perfect because though these people are not going to be living for the rest of their lives, they're not legal, married or anything, but they do have to make that first important choice of the person they are going to spend that momentous evening with. And it's almost a mini marriage kind of choice. In book number 142 in the Sweet Valley series, a story called the Big Night, you have not one, not two, not three, but four characters who end up switching their dates at the prom. And one girl tries to kill her date.

Oh, that's a. That must have been a thriller. Courtney tries to push Todd off of a boat railing into the water, and Elizabeth is in a speedboat following. Yeah. Yes, right.

Yes. Well, you know, that's just a variation on a theme, that's all. You have to do something slightly different with them when you're on 140.

Elena

Listening to you talk about this, it seems like what the prom does and what it gives you as a writer is it gives you a natural arena where there can be a conflict over love and an outcome. And without the prom, you'd have to invent some situation which would feel like it has weighed, whereas the prom just has the weight. Exactly. Because the prom is. It's a natural.

Susan Burton

It comes filled with all kinds of emotion, just the mention of the prom. You don't have to create something and build it up and give it terrible importance. You don't have to do any of those things. Did you go to prom yourself? I never went to my own promise.

I was not interested. Strangely enough, I didn't like high school very much at all. It's funny that I ended up writing so much about it. And what did you think of prom? I really was not interested.

I felt that I was too sophisticated and mature for that sort of stuff, and I just didn't. I never really participated beyond writing speeches for the political candidates and being on the newspaper. That's what I liked, but beyond that, I just didn't have an interest in it. You never cared to go to the prom, and so now, somehow fate has put you in a situation where you've had to revisit it over 35 times. That's right.

Yes, it's my punishment, but it's different because I don't have to show up there. The charming Francine Pascal, creator of Sweet Valley High.

Elena

It's wrong time again in the hard land my words fall like rain through the phone I was always hoping that I could be your date. But when I call, you are never home. Factory death and tuxes. So let's go to the prom, huh? You and me.

Back in 1994, when I was a reporter for NPR's All ThIngs Considered, I actually covered the senior prom at Taft High School in Chicago. And we thought we would play this story now because in contrast to the proms in Francine Pascal's books, this captures on tape what the prom usually is. Here is this very old recording. All year long, the teachers see students who slouch and gossip, students who wear clothing that teachers don't understand, students who need prodding and discipline and constant surveillance. And then on prom night, the students reappear, transformed as in a dream.

And the teachers wander around remarking to each other, can you believe how well behaved they are? How grown up they seem? Math teacher Jerry Padd has helped plan the prompt for years. Aren't they really great? They really are having fun.

We never have any trouble. They're just great kids. Oh, these are. Plus, these are the seniors that have made it. All the are out.

Carlo Rividenera's date, George Bork, hadn't bothered with the tox. He wore a black shirt, skinny black tie, black pants, no jacket. They were having fun. Except for one small hitch. Can't dance.

Susan Burton

He won't dance with me because he can't dance. Not that I want. It's like I can't, you know? You can't. Yeah, maybe if they play some metal.

Elena

He said he could slam dance. 95. Woo. 94. 94.

This couple was having a different kind of prom. We're going to Niagara Falls tomorrow morning, but tonight we're just gonna party. My girlfriend isn't telling me yet where we're gonna go. To the hotel. He went to a special place and I got him a special hotel room somewhere.

Susan Burton

And it's a surprise. What do your parents say about this? Well, my mom gave me that, you know, mother daughter sex talk, but it's a little too late for that. So kind of in one ear, out the other. But she was still very worried and she didn't want me to do this and she thought it was a waste of money.

But, you know. Your mother gave you a mother daughter sex tog. Yes. Yeah. Saying that something maybe he might.

Cause I'm leaving for college. Okay. And since we've been together this long, gonna be very dramatic between us two to lead each other. So she's like, oh, he's gonna bust the moves on you. He's gonna try to do sex acts to try to keep you here.

But it's too late for them. On the dance floor, there was a certain amount of copping feels and kissing. But the sexual tension at the prom hit a kind of surreal zenith when the DJ told the boys to bring chairs down to the dance floor. Girls were seated in the chairs and the garter ceremony began. We're gonna count down from ten.

Elena

Over 100 teenage girls presented bare legs with garters. All men have to put your hands behind your back, meaning grab the garter with your teeth. All right, we wanna count backwards from 1010. Nine. This is the kind of activity that separates the just friends prom dates from the real dates.

And dozens of just friends stood around the edges of the hall in various states of discomfort. Three, two, one. A hundred kneeling teenage boys bring their faces up against the slightly sweaty thighs of their dates, grip multicolored garters with their teeth, and drag them off the leg. It's a shocking and amazing sight. But when I ask teachers about it later, they all say, where have you been?

They've done this for years.

At homecoming, apparently, things get even more explicit.

Let's move to chairs and we'll have a slow dance.

As evening wore on, George and Carla, the couple that didn't dance, did go out for a couple of slow numbers. Why don't we get everyone to the floor? Later, when it was time to leave, they picked up their prom favors. And took some balloons from the centerpieces. And joined another couple, Mark and Charlotte, in Mark's father's Ford tempo.

They searched for a radio station. Put it on CKG. It's not a whole bunch of hippie rack. No, man, it's a bunch of hippie rack. I like it.

Nine.

Susan Burton

All right. I'm a man. I spell it. M a m man. Everybody pitched in a dollar for gas.

Elena

Carlo waved his people in other cars and inhaled the helium from her prom balloons. Pudgy bunny. Pudgy bunny. They argued about directions, discussed who Winona Ryder is going out with these days. And finally, after nearly an hour, we ended up at a party.

A pretty lively party. But mostly we stood around outside. Where's my liquor? In the store, Matt. Where's my liquor?

Charlotte repeated this about, oh, 20 times. Nobody else seemed too interested in getting drunk. But finally, someone organized a liquor run. Are they gonna sell to you? They'll sell to me.

If they don't sell to me, they'll sell to someone else. What do you want? Kiwi lime. Mad dog, baby. Mad dog.

What kind? Wait. He needs something. Give me that five pack. Here.

I'll give it ten. One thing you forget when you're not a teenager is how much time teenagers spend just standing around waiting, waiting to get organized, waiting for everyone to show up, waiting for the person buying liquor to return. Percentage wise, this was the largest part of the evening. Invariably, during this time, someone starts to get on someone else's nerves. For Charlotte and George, the feeling was mutual.

She always yabs, man. She never shuts up, you know? She just keeps on talking and talking. It's like, why don't you shut up? And it's like the tone of voice she uses, too.

She like the whiny tone of voice, you know? She's like, I don't want to hear it. I had to put up with her when she first started going and taft, man, and I hated it then, and I hate it now. It's like something that's bringing me down, you know? Go on.

Susan Burton

You're coming with us. Around 130, a decision was made to go to the beach, one of Chicago's downtown Lake Michigan beaches. And after much debate and four attempts to get a dozen people into cars, we finally drove to Belmont harbor and walked out to the big rocks on the water. Everyone stared at the lake. The city lights made the clouds glow orange.

Elena

In the distance, you could see some fog and the lights of the water pumping rigs. Those popping stations, man. How do you like to work out there? You get to work out there for three days, three days shifts. They both be out there.

It's bitch in the window, and they feed you. You work and you get paid, and you just hang around there, and it's like, real cool city job that you get paid through the ass for. It'd be so scary to be in a boat, you know, it's so dark. Unless I'm really smashed, I really feel uneasy around open water. Did you say you felt uneasy?

About what? Water. Open water. Lake water. Cool, man.

It's space. It's free, man. It's the best, man. It's the best you can go. Mark then launches into a fairly dire speech, which, coming from him, is surprising.

He's college bound, a good student on the football team, usually easygoing and self confident. Seriously, man, there is no freedom in this goddamn place, man. There's always some cop or somebody asking what you're doing there, because there's always somebody who owns the place. They're always going to come to you and ask you, you know, especially when you're underage. Then they're going to really get on your back, giving you lectures about what you're not supposed to do what you're supposed to do.

Claire and Charlotte go off for cigarettes. Carla takes her shoes off. We talk about this and that. And then we look behind us and see the blue lights through the trees split. What's that?

Cops. No evening like this can be complete without a run in with the police. They're perhaps a hundred yards away in the parking lot in their squad car. What? They getting out?

Are they getting out? The police hover there a few minutes, put a ticket on one kid's car and drive off. No big deal. Next stop, naturally, is an all night restaurant. By the time we hold the big plastic Denny's menus in our hands.

It's four in the morning. You ready to order? I want salad. What can I get for you? You know what we're gonna have?

I'm gonna have to play it against Lamb. They gossiped. They floated pleasantly from topic to topic. Fate had handed them a prom, and they knew they were supposed to stay out all night. And they kept wandering from place to place, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing much did, but nothing bad did either. It's starting to get light outside, people. Gotta get going soon. I'm gonna sleep all day. I can't sleep all day.

Back in the car, George said that the best moment of the prom was when he got to slow dance with Carla. Mark said it was when he missed getting a ticket from those cops. Charlotte said it was when she looked around at all the people at the prom. And realized that she no longer had to return to Taft high School.

Somebody. All right, I don't know. To song as good as I thought I did. I'm gonna need somebody to leave.

Act four. Only one thing missing. So every year for the past 70 years, on the third weekend in May, all the high schools in Racine, Wisconsin, hold their proms. On that same night, after all the proms have ended, the kids from all seven schools drive a parade route through town in convertibles and limos and antique cars, ice cream trucks and semis to the post prom party, which in Racine is actually bigger than the actual prom itself. Hosted by the local rotary club, it goes from 830 at night until three the next morning.

People set up lawn chairs to watch this procession of cars, this parade. It is a huge, huge deal. And then it got even bigger. Wendy Doar tells what happened. The good people of Racine loved their prom, and they were always looking for ways to make it better.

Susan Burton

And so they added to it a force even more powerful than the prom itself. They added live television coverage. Last year, 60,000 eyes were watching a rite of passage. Seven schools, one great location, one night only.

Elena

It's prom. Prom live, Saturday, May. What will you be wearing? It's a really, really incredible atmosphere in there with an $8,000 laser show, five to $10,000 worth of balloons and flowers. Craig Haskins has been running the Rotary Club's post prom for the past couple of years.

Susan Burton

He was voted into the job by his fellow Rotarians simply because he is 27 years old and by far the youngest Rotarian in Racine. And he looks young on prom night. He has to wear a special badge so the high school kids know not to ask him to dance. They're screaming people. The red carpet, television crews.

Elena

Two talented. You know, like the host and hostess that interview you when you walk through the door. And just like Joan Crawford. That's her name, right? Joan Rivers.

Joan Rivers. Just like Joan Rivers when you walk through. What are you wearing? You know, that's a beautiful talk. So that's a nice dress.

Susan Burton

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Time Warner Cables cover of the 2001 Rotary post prom parade. Live from festival hall on Racines lakefront. My name is Deb Silverson. When I was walking down the red carpet, I felt like I was. You feel like a celebrity.

Zach Fishbane was a senior at Horlick High this year. And there's fans, people of all ages, you know, there's bleachers, packed bleachers, hundreds of people around the rival area. And people screaming your name, taking pictures, holding their hands out. It feels like the paparazzi's were, like, following me around with television cameras in your face. What did you do before you got here?

We went to the country club and ate with the reservoir. The whole school did. Okay, so you all ate together and then came down here. There's people on and the left of the carpet, interviewing and watching all these limousines and friends coming in. Everyone feels like a celebrity.

Elena

And everyone sees everyone else as a celebrity. Everybody is everybody's best friend at post prom.

You walk in and you see the strobe lights flashing. And the celebrity feeling is even multiplied when you get there. And that feeling doesn't go away until, well, I still have it three weeks later. And I'm still feeling like a celebrity watching it all again on television. So as long as you keep watching it and everyone knows how big of a deal it is, it really isn't downplayed, you know, once you kind of lose that feeling, you think about prom and start talking about it with again.

And people want to hear about it. People who didn't go and have been watching and have so many questions for you. Did you do this? Did you see this person? What kind of music did they play?

You are the center of attention when prom is the topic. So you maintain that celebrity feeling. Here's what it looks like to the home viewer. Because this is low budget local cable programming, it's mostly just one camera shot. Couples enter the festival hall, passing two by two in front of the camera, woo hooing and high moming straight into the camera, one after the next.

Susan Burton

And this goes on for 4 hours in Zach's house. This footage has become a kind of video wallpaper. While I was there interviewing him, a copy of the cable broadcast played the whole time in the living room. Sometimes a family member would drop out of the conversation to stare at it for a while. Now and then, Zach's mom Susan, would call our attention to the screen.

Here he comes. Look how handsome.

We have been so excited with it. We've watched it numerous times. It's great. I mean, we play it back all the time. It's right.

We have two copies of it. It's in two tvs, and every time you watch it, you see somebody different. It's so much fun when you run into the parents and the kids in the city, you know, to say, and your pink dress and your matching tux was just great. And it's great.

Elena

If you ask the local television studios, what's the biggest again, Craig Haskins. The Oscars, Super bowl, or prom. They would hands down say prom because it's the highest rated anything in town. And that's a good way to judge people's interests as to what they're watching on tv. Proms everywhere are all about hype.

Susan Burton

And so it's no surprise that once you have a prom that's a tv show, that the ratings would be hyped, too. The cable company's commercial says that 60,000 eyes were watching the prom, but by that, they actually mean 30,000 viewers, two eyes per viewer. And really, even that number is just a guess for sure. One person who was not watching the prom was Kirsten Hipsky. I spoke with her at her job at Desmond's formal wear, a tuxedo rental store at the Regency mall.

It is also safe to say that Kirsten was the only person in the mall that night who was reading Plato's phaedrus for fun. I'm rereading it. It's the last thing we read in school, and it was really wonderful, and I wanted to keep reading it. And also I compared to my greek.

You didn't go to prom? No. No, I didn't. Prom is a beautiful illusion. People here indulge in the thought that maybe they're not in the place that they are.

Racine is not a glamorous place. And, I mean, I know I'm part of it.

If you're someone who hates the prom, there's no better way to refuel your hatred than by working at a tuck shop. Kirsten says everyone at the store despises the prom. The worst part being when the kids bring their sweaty suits back, sometimes they'll come up, like, stuffed into a little grocery bag tied really tight, and you had to pretty much disinfect the whole thing and pick it up very lightly. The boss here got fungus underneath her fingernails one time from dealing with someone's socks. Do you get suits with grass stains?

Oh, yeah. Grass puke mud.

For people that say that prom is there for people to feel special for once in their lives. I don't know about that. I mean, find me one high school senior who really needs an ego boost. It's the time to be cocky and prideful, and I think it's kind of indulgent of that. And if they say that they feel like a celebrity, it doesn't surprise me at all.

Cause they, you know, they do get treated like celebrities, even though they, you know, their personality might be less than beautiful. And I'm certainly glad I didn't take part in it. To truly enjoy the racine prom, and maybe to enjoy any prom, you have to be the sort of person who enjoys the hype leading up to it. Zach certainly did. For basically his whole life, I have.

Elena

Been watching prom on television every. Every spring, every may. And it's only natural. Middle schoolers, elementary school, grade school, high school, all ages are watching this. So every year we watch it.

And as a kid, I thought I was gonna come in a helicopter with a yellow tuxedo. Actually, this year, there was a kid in a yellow tuxedo, but no helicopters. Unfortunately, watching it on tv, I just. I never realized how glorious this festivity really was until I actually was a part of it. I mean, it seems great.

You look so forward to it. And it was even better when I got there, because it was the real thing I was experiencing the realization and the fact that I knew I was actually there and no longer looking forward to it made it that much better. Prom, after all, is just a dance, plus a whole lot of hype. Racine understands this so well that it's possible they've created the greatest prom in the world. They've hyped it to the point that when I asked a bunch of junior high school girls if they were looking forward to the prom, all of them looked at me as if I just asked them if they were, in fact, of the human species.

Susan Burton

Because, they explained, by the time they reach senior year, who knows how big it could get?

Elena

Wendy doar. These days she's an executive producer and editor at New York Times Audio. Since this story first aired in 2001, the prom has grown from seven to nine area high schools. Special thanks to Ovo Incorporated, an arts collective in New York. It's from them that we heard about the prom and race scene.

They made a film about it called world's best prom. They were very helpful.

Our programmer today was a rerun produced by Starly Kine and myself with Alex Bloomberg, Wendy Doran, Jonathan Goldstein. Senior producer for today's show was Julie Snyder. Production help from Todd Bachmann, Paul McCarthy, Seth Lind and Emily Youssef. Additional help on today's rerun from Michael Kamate, Katherine Raimondo, Safiya Riddle and Ryan Rumery. Special thanks today to Enid Edwards, Mavis Dukes, Paul Feig, Mike Madison, Susan and Richard Rosenberg.

The city of Racine, Lynn Young, Kevin, Patty, Jay Cornus, Bruce Drake and National Public Radio music up today from Mister John Connors, Greg Hill and Matt Shoup and Jason Bittner, who wrote and performed the song Tornado on the dance floor for our program Nathaniel Raymond, and the implications to the song for us as well. Our website, thisamericanlife.org dot. You can listen to over 800 episodes of our show for absolutely free. This american life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co founder, Mister Tory Maletia, who describes his job this way.

You work and you get paid and you just hang around there and it's like real cool city job that you get paid through the ass for. I'm Aaron Glass. Back next week with more stories of this american life, next week on the podcast this American Life. Majid was locked up for years at a CIA black site. When he says, somebody told him, Madre, we can't let you go.

We think if we let you go, you speak fluent English and then you're going to tell the world that how american me up and you're gonna end up in Oprah show or something. But after two decades, he's finally getting a chance to speak not on Oprah, but here. This case raises one of the fundamental questions at Guantanamo can the torture inflicted on you at a CIA black site result in a more lenient sentence? That's next week on the podcast or on your local public radio station.

Susan Burton

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