I went to Pi Phi Formal this weekend. I was lucky enough to accompany my girlfriend Mallory, and couldn’t have asked for a better person to share the experience with; despite the fact that the sun set at the odd time of 4:38p.m., Mallory lit up the night with her beautiful smile and lovely personality. Beyond that, I like the Pi Phi Sorority; they’re all great girls with good heads on their shoulders.
But formals are kind of weird, aren’t they? Just the concept of formals, not the specific one I attended on Friday night. We all dress up to pose for staged photos on the pier where we fake fits of hysterical laughter and provide snapshots of a joy that has never existed on earth. As everyone flaughed at the cameras, I was smacking my cheeks to make sure my nerves hadn’t frozen over in the cold.
When we did finally arrive, I fell out of the party Hummer and vomited on the sidewalk for a good five minutes due to the ceiling’s flashing lights. Getting into the club was a nightmare in and of itself, as two “bouncers” forced us to give them IDs without any rhyme or reason. I say that because it was a dry party and they weren’t holding a list, so there was literally nothing on our IDs that could’ve affected our entrance one way or another. It was just a sad moment when we had to all act like these two guys had any power whatsoever.
Once inside, the real fun began. And by real fun I mean that the DJ played 3.5 hours of dubstep that I could not dance to nor determine when and where one song ended and the other began. I longed to go back to when formals consisted of girls in poodle skirts and a night full of doing the twist with guys with slicked back hair and leather jackets. Unfortunately, all we were led to do was “get out of our minds” and “put a look on our face like we smelled some piss” (Is this real life?).
Everything would’ve been fine, but then some random guy went and stole my girlfriend’s crutch (she had surgery on her leg, and is fine, thanks for asking) and proceeded to grind on it for 20 minutes as if he weren’t in a room full of 200 people, all staring at him in abject horror.
By the nights end, I was back in the same stretch Hummer, next to a string of guys who had literally sweat through their suit coats, if that’s even possible. I played four years of high school basketball and can honestly say I’ve never seen people sweat as much as they do at formals.
Formals are a funny thing, but even a curmudgeon like me has a hard time not enjoying himself. It helps to have a great partner in crime to laugh with when someone kidnaps their crutch and swings it around their head on the dance floor, because without her I think that would’ve been it for me.
That’s kind of a microcosm for my life; every day is spent trying to come to terms with the fact that people are metaphorically grinding on crutches and spinning them over their heads, and I will never understand why.
But sometimes it’s OK to not have an answer.
