Would anyone like to hear a cool Sean anecdote? I know my blog is mostly about geeky stuff and pop culture references, but it’s about me as well. And the story of May 12, 2000 is a pretty exciting tale. One of the busiest, wildest days of my life – though in hindsight, ‘wild’ is a pretty mild term. But still, it’s a fun story involving bombs, babes, tuxedos and dancing…it has it all!

Though it mostly has Seans

On the 12th of May, in the year of our Lord, 2000, your favorite blogger was the ripe old age of 16 and attending Dana L. West High School in the hamlet of Port Byron, New York. We have a Thruway stop, perhaps you’ve heard of us. Still basking in the glow of surviving Y2K a few months prior, I woke up that clear Spring morning knowing full well that my day was going to be pretty cool – I just had no idea how cool or weird it would get by the end.

For you see, the Gods of Scheduling had pulled a fast one. Despite having a full 365 days in a year, May 12, 2000 had been scheduled for both my Advanced Placement American History final and my Junior Prom.

So I already knew I was going to have a busy day. Click the jump to continue…

This may come as a complete surprise to a lot of you readers, but I was a total dork in high school. I was fat, I had big glasses, I didn’t dress in the latest fashions and I was socially awkward. If you need a moment to let the shock sink in, I’ll wait. Anyway, the one thing I did have going for me was that I was smart, and as such, I was in a lot of advanced classes, and AP American History was one of the coolest. It was a distance learning class, in that the teacher was actually in a whole different school district, and she was teaching both her class there and our class in Port Byron through the use of live-streaming video cameras. Plus all my friends were smart too, so it was the group of us all taking this cool history class in the most high tech room in the school. It was just neat taking a class with the teacher on a TV screen. Wave the future, right?

Professor Needles

Well the AP History test was a big deal, and would actually count for college credit if I scored high enough. So I had done a lot of studying and there was a lot of stress when it came to the test.

There was also a lot of stress in the fact that I didn’t have a date for the Prom. Again, shocking, I know.

Somehow in all my awkwardness, I had managed to ask two girls to the prom, both of whom turned me down. It didn’t help that the first girl I asked was a friend of mine who already had a date, and that I asked the second girl the week of the Prom. Believe me, that was embarrassing. There is no excused for doing something so stupid. I have since made a begrudging peace with the fact that I was socially awkward in high school. So sue me. Anyway, I was going stag to the Junior Prom. We didn’t have a Senior Prom, so the Junior one was kind of important. I probably could have just skipped Prom, but that wasn’t me. I didn’t want to miss out on this important event because of the sheer novelty of it.

No matter what…

(Please note, that’s not a real picture from my prom…)

So my day started as normally as could be expected. I didn’t have my driver’s license then, so I’m sure I took the bus to school. I have no memory of how the day started, but eventually my AP History class was shipped off to the test. It was being held in some other school, so we loaded onto a bus and went out there. I’m pretty sure that meant I got to skip a few other classes that day, so awesome. I don’t remember the test, only that I scored a 3 out of 5 – and I need at least a 4 to get college credit. So that sucked. Though considering the cool history classes I took in college, it was no great loss.

Funny side story, I also remember that the AP History class, like  every history class I had ever taken, had ended at World War II. I have never taken a history class or studied any American history that occurred after the end of the Second World War. To this day, my knowledge of anything from the late 40s through the 80s is limited at best. Presidents, the peace movement, civil rights, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War; all of it is pretty fuzzy, and has been pieced together from movies and TV.

I can still remember being amazed to later learn that John F. Kennedy was the president who immediately follows Dwight D. Eisenhower.

So wait…Eisenhower killed Kennedy to get his hands on the jack ruby?

But none of that mattered at the time, because the test was over and it was time to head back to school. Since it was the day of Prom, I’m fairly certain that most of my classmates had been allowed to go home early to get ready. But I passed on that option for reasons that should be obvious by now (total nerd). And I’m glad I didn’t go home early because there was a bomb in the school!!

Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb

Not a real bomb, of course. But that didn’t stop someone from calling in a bomb threat!

Anyone who was in school in the late 90s probably remembers the bomb threat scares that gripped the country. Someone somewhere figured out that if you call in a bomb threat to a school, they have to close school and evacuate the building for a long period of time. And once one person did it, everybody started doing it all over. For like a month straight, we had at least one bomb threat a week, which resulted in every single student being evacuated from the school for several hours on end. I can still remember everybody hanging out on the football field just killing time and playing hacky sack or whatever. Good times.

The bomb threat on May 12, 2000, was no different, though by then we’d all gotten pretty used to the damn things so we knew the routine. We were out there on the field for some time before they let us back in the school, with only one class left in the day.

But on my way back into school I remembered something very important: I didn’t have any clothes to wear to the After Prom Party!

Which I just knew was gonna be off the hook!

The After Prom was going to be an all-nighter at the local YMCA, with movies, games, raffles, prizes, pizza, candy and whatever the hell else we crazy kids wanted. But since nobody was going to wear their tuxes or fancy dresses at such a party, we were all supposed to leave a bag full of clothes in the main high school office, which would be shipped to the YMCA in time for the After Prom.

And I had absolutely forgotten to prepare a bag of clothes!

Thinking quickly, I hurried to the locker room on my way back from the bomb threat. I changed into my gym clothes and put my school clothes into my bookbag. We didn’t have school uniforms, or anything of that nonsense, so it was just my shirt and pants. I rushed the bag to the main office and could rest easy – only now I was late to class and dressed in my gym clothes.

Fortunately, the teacher didn’t care all that much, considering the Prom and the bomb threat. So I sat through one last class with only my gym clothes on my back. Then I took the bus home and probably watched some cartoons until it was time to get dressed in my tux and have my dad drive me to meet my friends, because they were kind enough to let me get in on the limo with them. Only it turns out my friends had changed the meeting place without telling me.

My dad drove me to the one friend’s house, but nobody was there. I found his mom, and she was nice enough to inform me that the meeting place had been changed to another friend’s house several miles away. So I get back in the car and we drove over, finally finding everybody. All the parents were there taking pictures, and everybody was happy and excited.

Five guys, four girls…no pizza place

Yes, I was the only one of my friends without a date. Get over it.

So I’d already lived through a final exam and a bomb threat, now it was time for Prom. I’ll let you decide amongst yourselves which one of those would be more stressful. We loaded up into the limo, probably my first limo ride ever, and we headed out to our dinner reservations at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Syracuse about 45 minutes away. Spaghetti in tuxedos and fancy dresses? Yep! And wouldn’t you know it, the driver got lost along the way. Not his fault, the Spaghetti Warehouse was tucked all the way down into an out of the way business district. Though I would later come to learn that there was a totally badass comic book shop right next to the Spaghetti Warehouse, and I’d end up visiting that business district a lot more in the years to come.

Anyway, dinner was fine. I don’t really recall what it was like, though we may have run into some other prom goers from some other schools. I may have also played the classic Simpsons arcade game that the Spaghetti Warehouse had in their game room. How could I pass that up?

Oh childhood, where have you gone?

We all got back into the limo and drove for another 45 minutes or so to the location of the Junior Prom: Emerson Park. My class had rented out their big hall, which was far from super classy, but I wasn’t one to complain. Emerson Park is just outside Auburn, NY, on the northern tip of Owasco Lake. It was the park/beach to visit growing up, so I’d been there a million times before. Does anybody else remember the rocket slide?

Now THIS was a childhood!

Prom was fine. And for once my luck actually turned around. At one point I found myself hanging out with my friend/distant cousin by marriage Saandra, and she hooked me up with a friend of hers who had also come alone: a girl named Angela. She was a total babe. One of the great things about my high school was that we only had maybe 70-80 kids in our class. So while we had our cliques and we kept to those circles, we still all pretty much knew each other by name. So I knew of Angela, but I don’t think I’d ever said two words to her before that night. Still, we hit it off and I had someone pretty to dance with. Thanks Saandra! And hi Angela! I don’t think either of them read this blog…

But Prom wasn’t all fun and beautiful women, let me assure you.

Remember earlier, when I had forgotten to pack clothes for the After Prom, and thought I’d settled that by stuffing my school clothes into a bag? Well it was only once the dance was underway that I realized I hadn’t been able to pack a pair of sneakers! I couldn’t exactly take off the sneakers I had on at school and stuff them into a bag. And those tuxedo shoes were already starting to hurt my feet. There was no way I could spend the entire After Prom in those damn fancy shoes. What was I to do?

Call my parents.

“No Sean, we’re not that embarrassed.”

I don’t remember how I got ahold of a telephone, but I called my parents and told them the problem. My dad then drove out to Emerson Park with a pair of sneakers. But rather than meet him at the dance, I left the hall and walked across the big lawn in the middle of the night to meet him at the main entrance. I can still remember standing underneath the only streetlight waiting for him to pull up. He eventually showed and I got the sneakers, then made my way back to Prom.

Not the most glamorous moment of the night, but man, oh man, is it funny in hindsight.

So I made it back to the Prom, we elected a king and queen, and I danced with Angela some more. I have a few pretty cool pictures from that night from the cheap disposable camera I brought with me that I’ve always wanted to show my friends, but my scanner doesn’t work anymore. So maybe I’ll just hold on to them until a later date. They are some good pictures. I have one in particular of my friend Dave Vitale and his date that is just stunning. If he reads this and wants to see the picture, let me know. I’ll find a way to get it scanned.

Prom eventually came to an end, and we all piled back in the limo to go to the After Prom…but there was tragedy afoot!

Angela the total babe had to work the next morning! She wasn’t going to go to the After Prom. But such was my luck with women in high school. I’m pleased to say that has since changed…maybe by a fraction of a little bit.

After Prom was a blast. It was basically just one big all-night party with all my friends and classmates. I don’t remember if I won anything really cool in the raffles, but it was fun nonetheless. Movies, snacks, general shenanigans. And at some point through it all, the clock struck midnight and I turned into a pumpkin, ending one of the coolest, zaniest, most action-packed days of my young life.

And I hope you all enjoyed my story.