All Night Long: How I Survived the After-Prom Party

How many teenagers does it take to break a papasan chair?

After the all-night after prom party we hosted Saturday night, I now know.
(Three in case you were wondering.)

In the immortal words of Lionel Richie, those kids partied…karamu-ed…fiesta-ed…forever.
All. Night. Long.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. There were moments when I was a little disappointed in the level of roof-raising that was going on. Or lack of.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. For those of you who don’t follow along on Facebook or who do follow but don’t see my posts because Facebook hates bloggers and keeps 75% of our stuff from 75% of our followers (if you’re in the lucky 25% who get my stuff in your newsfeed, go buy a lottery ticket. I’m serious) let me catch you up to speed.

Thing 1 went to her senior prom. We had the after party. The end.

It really is as simple as that. But here’s a bit more color for you: Because we know (most of) the group of kids — and know that they’re awesome — and maybe a tiny bit because we’ll pretty much agree to do anything that will make our daughter happy before she leaves for college in three months, we’d agreed to host this all night shin-dig a few weeks ago. (And I know she’s reading this and is now making a  list of other obscenely grand requests.) It didn’t really seem like that big of a deal.

Until the group doubled.

But by then it was too late to back out, to jump ship, to remember we had to wash our hair that night or take a last minute trip to Las Vegas, so we only had one choice.

After the 38 hour hour and a half photograph session (longer than my own wedding and resulting in many more photos) and the kids all headed to dinner and to the actual prom (where I’m pretty sure they spent less time than at the picture session) we headed back to sit on our deck and have a glass of wine and some lovely summer salads furiously get everything ready for the party.

I think the easiest way to share what transpired next is to give you the Facebook updates with a few details thrown in of course.
Of course.

It all began with an idea –

Then I got worried that there might not be enough excitement except for maybe (hopefully?) a few sing-a-longs.

Hey, don’t laugh until you’ve listened to “Avenue Q.” It’s like “Cards Against Humanity” set to music. Which is actually ironic when you discover what ended up happening.

I hear that at 4:30 a.m. his guitar playing wasn’t as popular as it was at midnight.

Once everyone arrived, I realized a small oversight on my part –

Very quickly — as in within 10 minutes or so — I both feared and celebrated the fact that this party wasn’t going to go the way I’d imagined –

One guy said, “It’s the pizza. It makes us feel all warm and sleepy.”

And then I very quickly became elated that this was the kind of party where that can be said about pizza so I got out the old Twister game and began organizing a game of charades.
Not really. I didn’t have time.
Because a mere eight minutes later things started to get caRAzy.

Okay. Not that crazy. But still.

Apparently when two teenagers are squished in the papasan bowl and another full grown man/teen jumps on top of them, the poor bamboo base can’t take it. Go figure.

And remember how I was concerned about the cat hair on the sofa a mere 32 minutes earlier? Ironic, because –

And then the party was saved. By this. <– Please click on that link if you’re not familiar with “Cards Against Humanity” and watch the animated header for a minute. It will be vital to understanding the next few updates. But if you’re too busy (which is super evident by the fact that YOU’RE READING THIS BLOG POST), here’s a small example:

BRING BACK THE GUITAR!

BRING BACK THE WARM, SLEEPY PIZZA!

BRING BACK THEIR INNOCENCE!!

And then this happened –

Out of the 30 kids here, there were only two couple-couples. Everyone else was just friends so we went into this party thinking our odds of not having a baby named after us was pretty good.

Until the cuddling.

But I checked with Thing 1 and she assured me a girl can’t get pregnant from cuddling so I felt a lot better.

The game continued…

…and after scrubbing my brain with Clorox to rid it of the things I heard them shouting in the basement, I went online and ordered a set.
Because duh.

When I heard one of them yell, “TENTACLE PORN!” I knew it was time for me to check out.

And also, tentacle porn? That’s hilarious.

But try as I might — from TWO FLOORS UP — it took me awhile to fall asleep. Huh. Wonder why.

Thankfully (not-thankfully) I was woken up at 7:30 a.m. by a shrieking gas-detection alarm going off outside my bedroom door (low battery) and again at 8:30 a.m. by the after-prom party that served breakfast and country/dance/and rap music OUT BY THE POOL and IN THE POOL at the house behind ours. ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME HERE???

Our last guests stumbled out at around 10:45 a.m., looking every bit as sleepy and frazzled as I felt.

But we survived and it was a success and we survived.

Wait. Did I already say that?

Later, Thing 1 summed it up like this:

“You know, sleepovers with boys aren’t that different than sleepovers with girls.”

Huh. It’s possible the girl might learn a bit more in college than academics.

I think the moral of the story is this: I’m so happy my daughter wanted to have the party at our house. I’m happy the kids wanted to come here knowing full well that we’d be present. I’m happy she’s surrounded herself with people who eat pizza to get all warm and sleepy and who cuddle at parties instead of couple at parties (use it as a verb). I’m happy that we were able to provide a safe place for these kids to laugh and have fun and make memories, tentacle porn and all.