Erin's Story:

Prom is all about showing off. How good do you look? How much did your gown cost? Who is your date? Can you dance? And of course - What kind of transportation did you arrive in? These days it's gone so far that it's not just cool to rent a limo, it's even cooler to rent a Stretch Hummer H2. And if you're not showing up as a big group, then you better have a fancy car to show up in.

I never drove a fancy car in high school, and my then-boyfriend Jeff's Ford Explorer wasn't quite prom-worthy. So we naturally begged my parents to borrow their car for the evening - a white Saab convertible, which I couldn't drive because it was a standard transmission, but that was no problem for Jeff. By this point, I had already been dating Jeff for over a year, so my parents gave us their blessing to borrow the Saab.

Prom night rolled around and everything started off smoothly. We cruised away in the Saab (driving very slowly with the top down, so my hairstyle wouldn't fall out of place), and rolled up at prom in style, savoring the looks on people's faces when they saw us in our white convertible. Everything else was great - dinner, dancing, photo opportunities, and the usual prom events. The memorable event of the night began as it came time to actually leave prom.

We walked out the door with a group of friends and strolled over to our Saab to leave. They stood around as we got in the car, turned it on, and waved goodbye. As I waited for Jeff to back up and drive away, he looked over at me and whispered, "Umm… how do you put the car in reverse?!?!?" I looked down at the gear shift and saw that it had no numbers or letters on it. We tried a few different gears, but everything seemed to be forward, not reverse, and each time we tried, the car would inch forward.

By this time, the group of friends had realized that we were clueless as to how to actually drive away and found this pretty amusing. I slowly remembered that "there's some trick" to going in reverse in the Saab, but I couldn't think of exactly what that was, since I had never driven it before. A button to press or something? We scoured the car looking for some sign of reverse, but found nothing. Finally, we borrowed a friend's cell phone and called my parents for help. They instructed Jeff to "push down on the stick shift and pull it all the way backward until it locks into place". Ahh, push down - that was the trick!

So eventually, we waved and drove away from our friends, smiling sheepishly and a bit more humbled than when we arrived. It turns out that we weren't quite as cool as we had thought. Next time, I'll make sure to take a car for a practice run before I try to show off in it.


Drew's Story:

I'll keep my worst prom experience short and simple. I was thrilled to bring Carly to my senior prom, being that she was the Junior Prom Queen the year before. However, the opportunity to bring her as my date turned out to be bittersweet, as I slowly realized that she was more interested in checking out the other girls at prom, rather than me (or any of the other guys, for that matter). I still managed to have a good time at prom, but let's just say that my choice of date was less than ideal.