Back in high school, Ankur roped me into writing an editorial for the awkwardly-named Fanscotian newspaper about how much the junior prom sucked ass. You can read the article, which needs some major prettying up, here. I forget how the whole thing came about, although I have a feeling I got the job thanks my perpetual bitching about how unpopular I was and how little I cared about Jane Shih's dress. There were two problems, however. First, the article was due before the junior prom actually took place, and second, like The Shawshank Redemption, the junior prom started off slow but ended as a rousing success thanks to, ironically, Jane Shih. But anyway, I wrote this article and I figured that since you'd have to be extraordinarily bored to even consider reading the Fanscotian, it would just go by unnoticed.

Well, it didn't. And I want to analyze what happened because I think I've come to a conclusion about people. About other people.

See, the editorial got one of two responses. Either you had a blast at the prom and you had some problems with my article, or Dave Lasus dumped you at the prom and my article captured the experience perfectly. (We don't even want to think about why you were dating Dave Lasus in the first place.) My own experience — I sat quietly at table nine, ate my nasty food, watched Jess Biegelson and Evan Dornbush make out prudishly. Every now and then, I went off moping and James was nice enough to commiserate. A little before dessert, I was moping on a flowery bench outside the bathroom when Jane and company saw me looking pathetic, told me I ought to be dancing, and the rest was history. Random chance — if I wasn't on that bench, if those girls didn't all decide to pee at the same time — and the prom would've been a lot different.

It's just a very familiar pattern... cough, cough, senior dinner. You head in with these expectations, then capricious fate and mercurial personalities intervene, and you realize how different things could have been and how little control you have over your experience. No wonder there's no gray area.