This year, McIntosh paid $40,000 so that the resident upperclassmen could spend three hours tomorrow night dancing (or being a wallflower) at the Georgia Aquarium.

To prevent any misconceptions, this money was not taken directly from the school. No, rather those attending the event are footing the bill.

This is appropriate, you might say. If they want it, let them pay for it.

The problem is that those parents (to make a hasty generalization) who are doing the footing of that hefty bill are not paying for a venue, theoretically. They are paying for the quintessential high school check mark of prom. That means dress shopping, hair appointments, giddy comparisons of plans, prom pictures, pre prom dinners, and the selected (and edited) stories that their children are willing to share afterwards. Notice that the prom venue is not mentioned.

Yet the primary focus of MHS’s prom seems to be the location. Look at the ticket prices- that $95 and up is not going towards the quality of your memories.

Is it even possible to make a profit? With so many seniors not paying for a ticket and the total costs of goody-bags, t-shirts, and other miscellaneous costs, it can’t possibly bring a profit worth the trouble. (I know that the seniors’ dues go to it, but dues are $75 total, and tickets start at $95. And some of those dues are said to be going to other things as well. The only way I can imagine that the school would make up the difference is by jacking up ticket prices, but even if that’s what’s going on, there still isn’t enough money floating around to fill the gaps. So then you ask, are they pulling the good old Social Security trick and taking money from the younger class’s dues to pay for this year’s prom? And if so, why is that acceptable?)

Then you say that profit is not the point and that money doesn’t matter in this situation.

This is a lie.

When so much money is involved, it becomes impossible to ignore the financial aspects. The amount of money that goes into prom adds up to a substantial investment. And investments are meant to make a profit. But the only product of the countless thousands spent on this evening is the evening itself.

The prom committee has an agreed upon answer to my queries: we have a contract, and we can’t do anything about it, sorry. It is unfortunate that these lovely people who are willing to handle the stress of planning that one-most-looked-forward-to-event of high school cannot make any real decisions regarding how it is run.

Based on a mesh of personal repulsions and some reasons of a more universal nature, I have made the decision not to attend prom this year. You may chalk it up to my eccentric character, and you wouldn’t be all wrong. Crowds make me uneasy, and the basic coordination of limbs while in motion is not my forte.

So just don’t go and leave the rest of us alone, you may be thinking.

To which I say that if you are looking for loneliness, you probably shouldn’t be going to prom.

Upon my decision to write this article, a classmate asked what I was thinking, not going to prom, “But you get to dress up and take pictures and eat a nice dinner with your friends.” Yes, and I can do that at home just as easily and without the pains of wallet cramp, which is not really even a cramp. The effect of prom on an average wallet is more of an attack, a strain of cancerous cells that are anything but benign. But hey, you get to look nice.

This Cinderella appeal is a considerably prominent facet of this intricately designed Cubic Zirconia. Something in the lights or the makeup or the loud music promises magic and intrigue, two things that the halls of MHS seem to be short on.

Yet, McIntosh’s prom is doomed to be a failure. Not because there will be anything essentially wrong with the night itself. The only problem is that when you put so much into something that has such a short life span, you expect perfection- and you have every right to do so. We are trained to look forward to prom from that first awkward middle school dance. From the first time you looked through your grandma’s photo albums of your parents’ high school years. We all build up these crazy hopes of a sort of redemptive nature: it doesn’t matter that I am awkward now, wait till you see me at prom. Then, you get to high school. The anticipation swells from day one. This grows exponentially in junior and senior year. Then, that fateful spring of your first prom comes and the teachers might as well quit because the closer that night gets, the less the kids care about anything else. Then you buy the ticket and the dress and make the appointment to get your hair shellacked and your face sculpted into society’s version of pretty, and it is suddenly very real.

There’s no going back.

Maybe that’s the beauty of events like prom: it is the first real disappointment, the first time you realize that money will not buy happiness, and pictures are not the same thing as memories.

Besides re-writing our culture, I can only think of one immediate fix for prom. Don’t pay so dang much for the venue. High school students are expected to take a class called economics in their senior year. I say it’s time the adults joined in the fun.

I know that for reasons of bragging rights and pride, MHS will never have a prom in the gym. Know, however, that this aversion is not always the case. My cousin lives in an area of North Carolina that is very similar to Peachtree City. The main difference separating our two high school experiences is that her prom will be held in their school gym. While discussing prom plans, she was appalled at my decision to boycott this year’s dance. I then mentioned that our prom tickets are $95 to start. And then they go up by increments of $10 the longer you procrastinate. There lay the viper in the petunias: her prom ticket was $15, and it always will be. Can you imagine a prom ticket that didn’t cost as much as the dress?

My cousin’s classmates once knew the Peachtree City-style prom. And then came the fateful year that their prom-goers got too rowdy and made fools out of themselves and their school (more than is typically expected on prom night), so the administration took charge and stopped outsourcing the prom venue. That should sound familiar. Students here are no strangers to having privileges taken away. And, my darlings, prom is a privilege, not a right.

Tomorrow night will probably not be the best night of your life; I won’t apologize for telling the truth. If it were, what do you have to look forward to? Since I do not wish to damper any moods, I only ask that you thank whoever provided the funding for your evening and that you do so profusely.