Dropping the Prom Bomb: It's Prom Season at Patch

That’s me. Senior prom, 1997. The night was sultry, the girl lovely and the tuxedo a fetching plaid, the combination making it one of the most magical nights of my life.

(Actually, the girl I was supposed to go with dumped me two weeks before the dance, my second date was a friend I kept making increasingly awkward passes at, I flipped off the DJ for taking off the only good song they were playing and the friend in whose rec room my group was crashing that night had recently moved, so my father checked up on an empty house and, convinced I had gone to the hotel party my friend Grant was trying to throw, drove to every hotel in a 30-mile radius trying to catch me. The next morning, Mrs. Parekh had to convince my dad over the phone I spent the night with the rest of the group where I said I would and that I was “a very good boy.”)

But I looked awesome and I did end up dating the girl for a couple months.

It's prom season at Patch and we're covering the big days at Andrew and Tinley Park high schools in many ways even before The Night.

We've got Andrew High School senior Austin Gomez writing a series about his path to prom, to the big night itself. (We're looking for a TPHS young writer to do the same for that prom next month.)

We're working on mass photo galleries of the events, talking to local florists and formal-wear shops about prom prep and even working on a super-secret video project to show dance-challenged kids some good moves to bust.

And, of course, we want you.

So show us how awesome – or terrible – you looked at your prom. We want to see pictures of top hats and tails, velvet tuxes with ruffled shirts, taffeta and crinoline stretched and puffed so much the only thing poofier is your ‘80s hair.

A few of us put our money where our mouths are in this article. What can I say? Plaid rocks.

Have a story? Share that too! It doesn’t have to be a wacky tale of woe like mine, but it can be. Have a first kiss there? Fall in love there? Are you still with your date? If you didn’t go to your prom, what did you do instead?

Prom is, if not a magical time, at least a memorable one. Share your memories as the Class of 2011 makes theirs. You can e-mail them to pauld@patch.com.

As for me, it could have been worse. A bunch of kids in my class took a trip to Great America the day after prom. They had a tornado warning.