I love this song, part one

Roped in by Activities Director Beatrice Longfellow (think Patty Simcox four years after graduation with big hair) to chaperone The Canyon Day School Junior and Senior prom. You may or may not be wondering how a 4'10" dimple-cheeked, Merle-Norman-wearing brunette could possibly talk me into voluntarily spending my Saturday night with 400 high school students. She's from Jersey. That's how.*

Anyway, after careful deliberation regarding my attire (such a fine line between "nice" and "Nevada Teacher in Slammer after Downing Cherry Bombs with Sophomore Track Star in Freemont Street Area Bar," I put on something boring and drove to what is arguably the swankest of the casinos. As I pulled up to the valet I debated for a what seemed to be an inordinately and unnessesarily (oh, alright...and pathetically)long time whether to bring my cell phone inside with me. The self-imposed communication ban with Bliss due to his recent conversion to the democratic party was becoming increasingly tenuous, even only five days in. Caving, I knew, would be easy that evening since he was in New York attending a very grown up work function at The Mandarin Hotel (replete with top-shelf cocktails, champagne and a bevy of leggy--and no doubt liberal,laid back, and utterly non-verbal--Eastern European models who shared an apartment in the Village and who were sent in for the sake of atmosphere after Bliss's boss doubtlessly made a phone call to his old college roommate who is a top fashion photographer in the city)while I was holding a punch ladle and doing bathroom duty, which, by the way, would not factor in as any sort of valid deterent towards keeping Emily T.and Natasha W. from snorting coke in the third stall--it was, after all, Natasha's daddy's casino and therefore, as she oh so logically explained, his third stall as well. Duh.

I tossed the phone on the passenger side seat, handed over my keys, and at the very moment prior to stepping through the rotating door of the casino made a realization that would sadly be the high point and the only worthwhile 5 seconds of my evening: Valet was making me fat.

"Ma'am, excuse moi, may I help you find where you are going?"
A lanky, somewhat gender-ambigious casino host stepped in front of me.
Ma'am?
"Oh I'm OK, uh, Pat (from Louisville, Kentucky according to his/her nametag). I know where I'm going. I see it's right that way," I said nodding toward Claire and Deirdre who were standing across the lobby at the bottom of the escalator, which snaked it's way upward around a 30 foot dripping chandelier.

"Kelly!" Claire yelled out waving her hand (yes, an admittedly bad joke among the three of us made in a feeble attempt to laugh when we really wanted to cry over our sorry Saturday night fate that Claire was Brenda and Deirdre was Donna and I was Kelly Freaking Taylor from the new 90210. Go ahead, cringe with me).

"Ah, Mademoiselle Kelly, you are here for the Canyon Day School prom. How vonderul."
Yes, how vucking vonderful, Pat from Louisville, Kenvuckingtucky.
"Do you have a son or a daughter attending this evening?"

I screamed in my head for a second and then sidestepped this stalker.

"Great, I said to Claire who was wearing her high school prom dress, "I'm not Kelly Taylor. Oh no, I'm Cindy Walsh."

Claire flashed a confused look and before I could explain came from behind us the sonorous voice of Tammy Faye, the school's requisite cougar. "Girls, you look gorgeous." Tammy Faye (an alias if you didn't catch that)is not the pitiful, washed-up, desperate kind of cougar. She's the smoking hot, whip smart, The Police's Don't Stand So Close to Me kind of cougar and so, it's impossible to entirely hate her (for, let's be honest in the Worst Case Scenario she was what of any of us would hope to be).

"You should the group of boys in the reception room down the hall," she said and then put her finger to her mouth, touched her ass and made some kind of syllabic hissing sound (this, of course, was grounds for complete abhorrance and best depicts my emotional conundrum regarding the Science Department Chair).

The four of us took the escalator up to the mezzanine level.
"Look at you," said Deirdre to me. You're wearing white! You have a flower in your hair! I've never seen you look so...(desperate searching)...pretty."
"This is a girl in love," said Tammy Faye.
"I do love the flower," said Claire.
"Just don't eat it," I said flatly, "It's oleander. It'll kill you." And it would.

We entered the ballroom. I don't know why I was so surprised. The Canyon Day School is no ordinary school, so why did I think its prom would be an ordinary prom? I had pictured tables strewn with some confetti and maybe a few candles floating in an oval vase, some helium balloons and a buffet table lined with slightly tarnished silver serving trays.
Wrong.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.