The Prom

One of the most exciting times in life is your senior year of high school. It’s a time when you end one chapter of your educational and social being and start a new one in college. One of the major milestones is the prom. It’s built up to be this magical night where you celebrate one last hoorah to your high school days as graduation nears. I went to my junior prom which was very low-key, but this was to be a grand event. It was being held at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan, NYC, which seemed like a palace at the time.

The date was quickly approaching and me and my friend Sophia, my date for the junior prom, had decided to go together once again. Along with eight other friends, we rented a limo and made plans to go to a few clubs in the city and a 24-hour arcade afterwards. I wanted to do something bold to mark the occasion and I had the perfect idea. Sophia was obsessed with the boy band, Backstreet Boys. Her “Boy” of choice was the blonde locked Nick Carter. {Enter light bulb over my brown-haired head}

When I got off the bus coming home from school one day, I stopped in to the local CVS. I headed for the boxes of hair dye and picked out the closest one I could find to Mr. Carter’s color. I got home, took everything out of the box, read the directions, and got to work. As my head started to burn a bit, I jumped in the shower and washed the dye out. I peeked out from the shower curtain to look in the mirror. It was a sight for sore eyes. Though still wet, the color was extremely intense. I got out and towel dried my hair to see a drastic change that I was not ready for.

My sister got home and had a look of horror on her face. I then knew it was worse than I had thought. No wait, it got even worse. As she slowly circled around me, she began to laugh and said to come with her. We stood in front of the mirror and she held up a mirror behind my head. I had missed multiple spots on my head to what looked like a splotchy mess. When my Mom got home, she took it all with a grain of salt as I pleaded for her help. Being experienced with hair products, she explained that we couldn’t dye it back right now because it would be too much on my scalp/hair that it could start falling out in clumps. She called her stylist and said that I could come in tomorrow and she’d be able to fix it for me.

I planned on not going to school the next day; however I had a huge test that I could not miss especially coming to the end of the term. So I sucked it up and braved all the stares and smirks for the entire day. Sophia was stunned when she saw it and was speechless. I said, “I thought it would be cool if I looked like Nick Carter since you love him so much… but it looks horrible… and turned out to be a mess… I’m getting it fixed today…” She stopped me mid-sentence and said “That was a really sweet idea, but I like you just the way you are silly.” I got my hair fixed just fine that day and the prom was a huge success. All things in life come with little bumps in the road but it’s always important to remember to just be yourself.