Prom disasters: gowns, goldfish and gunshots

Advertiser Staff

Prom is short for promenade — a pathway down which to take a gracious stroll. But as those who've been there can tell you, going to a prom isn't always a walk in the park.

Theda Pilar-Pineda, dressed up for her prom, ended up in the emergency room after being wounded by a stray shotgun pellet on the drive home. Photo courtesy of Theda C. Pilar-Pineda

We're not promising that the pain will go completely away; there's still a certain cringe factor evident in the letters we received, even decades after the events. But life will go on.

As it did for Glenda Chung Hinchey of Foster Village (Roosevelt, '62), who was thrilled to be asked by a senior to attend his commencement ball — her first prom and her first date in high school. Then the disaster: The ballroom had been decorated with the same fabric as her gown. Ouch!

For Sheena Billiamosa of Pearl City (Pearl City High School, '01), the gown disaster (five girls in the same little number as she was wearing) was only part of the story: First her hair and makeup went wrong, then picture-taking at her date's home took longer than she'd planned, then her car began to smoke as they drove into the parking lot and, finally, her lateness delayed the work of the prom committee upon which she served.

Sheena did her best to retain her composure, but eventually she couldn't hold back the tears, so she repaired to the ladies' room to have a good cry (as so many girls have done at proms before her). But then the tide began to turn: Her friend Seryna came by to comfort her, and they went back into the ballroom and ate dinner. Shortly afterward, the dancing started and pretty soon, Sheena was having a pretty darn good time. "I guess I'll always remember the disasters ... but overall, I enjoyed the experience of (the) prom, and I will never forget it."

Marlene Tom hasn't forgotten either. She survived her prom disaster, too, but some of those who attended the 1964 event in South Bend., Ind., did not. Tom was in charge of decorations for the prom, the theme of which was "Midnight Sayonara," and she and her committee worked hard to build a pagoda (which she admits looked more like a gazebo) and a pond for the ballroom, even stocking the little waterway with a school of valuable goldfish from a friend of her mother's.

A cautious sort, Tom had prepared well for the big day, purchasing her "Cinderella dress" months in advance — a yellow floor-length gown, worn with a tiara — and even going to the trouble of having a trial run of her hairdo ("the same hair style that Jacqueline Kennedy had worn at the banquet at the Elysee Palace in Paris"). But on prom day, the girl who had done her hair had a day off, and Tom emerged from the salon looking as though she had a bowling ball on her head.

At the prom, as she passed through the "pagoda" and began to climb up the stairs to the stage, she stepped on her skirt and proceeded to walk up her gown until, "by the time I reached the stage my feet were inside my skirt somewhere near my waist, and I was on my hands and knees with my tiara down around one eye. ... At that point I started laughing uncontrollably from embarrassment."

And let that be a lesson to you, prom-goers: Laugh. No matter what happens. Laugh. Even when your mom and dad pick up the goldfish from the prom pond while you're off having your post-prom fun. Even when, on the next morning, every one of the little darlings is belly up.

Theda C. Pilar-Pineda (Farrington, '84) didn't go belly up on her prom night, but she did have a health-threatening experience. Having survived the prom itself, despite a little problem when her gown got caught in the escalator at picture-taking time, she was preoccupied with another concern as she and her date headed home in the wee hours of the morning: Would he kiss her, and if so, how would she handle it?

As their car passed under the freeway at Houghtailing Street, she felt something slap her, hard. Suddenly, there was blood on her white lace gown, and her date was looking at her in horror. After helping her staunch the wound with his hankie, he rushed her home, where she burst through the door heading for the bathroom, leaving her date to explain the circumstances to her shocked mother. The source of the bleeding turned out to be a shotgun pellet and, after a long visit with the police, during which the neighbors all were roused, Theda ended prom night in the emergency room.

"I was able to avoid a goodnight kiss but not the pellet," she said.

While we're on the subject of goodnight kisses, a fair number of the letters and e-mails we received related to the subject of prom dates.

There was the Hilo girl who told how her boyfriend broke up with her two weeks before the prom but dutifully took her anyway, then spent the whole evening pointedly ignoring her, not even engaging her in conversation, much less dancing.

It was 20 years ago, but the hurt is still there: "Maybe I'll see him at the 20th class reunion, and then I can get some questions answered," she said, declining to give her name because "Hilo is a small town."

And the Mililani guy who, 23 years later, admits he took the wrong girl: Instead of someone with whom he was already friends, he asked a "popular" girl that he hardly knew, alienating his friend. Then his car got towed. And, when he took that "wrong" girl home, he didn't even get a kiss goodnight. He signed himself only Mike ("no last name, too embarrassing"). "I can look back on it and laugh now, but at that time, I just wanted to die. Ah, youth!"

Another anonymous e-mailer had an interesting perspective — and a little less sympathy for youth than Mike seems to have. She told of serving as chairwoman of her senior class prom: "After months of planning, preparations and putting it all together, my four best friends and I put the finishing touches on the prom room and left to get ready — them for their dates, me to baby-sit," she wrote.

You see, she didn't get to go to the prom because, having declined the invitation of the first "less desirable" person who asked her, the hard-and-fast social rules of the day didn't allow her to accept the second invitation, even though it came from the boy she really wanted to go with.

"Not a real horror story (except to me personally)," she wrote, "but very different from the way teens today manipulate social structures to get things their way."