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The Slice: Time to address the prom issue
Today The Slice presents a transcript of an interview with the only two middle class Spokane area parents who are not going to buy their teenage daughter an amazingly expensive prom dress.
You won’t believe what they had to say.
Q: So you want your daughter to be miserable?
A (Dad): No. We just don’t think it makes sense to spend that kind of money for a prom dress.
Q: What does your daughter say?
A (Mom): She says she wishes she had been given up for adoption.
Q: Could you afford to buy the dress if you were so inclined?
A (Dad): Not really. But that seldom stops us from getting out a charge card.
Q: Have your daughter’s siblings weighed in?
A (Mom): Yes. Her brother says if we shell out $900 for a prom dress, he wants a cash settlement of his own. I reminded him that we already have spent approximately $350,000 sending him to sports camps over the years.
Q: Is your daughter a pretty good kid?
A (Dad): Great kid. She almost always comes home within 24 hours of her curfew and there has been no sexting, at least so far as we know.
Q: But you don’t want to splurge on a prom dress?
A (Mom): No, we would prefer to put that money in her college fund. But I suppose we are to blame. We let her go a bit overboard with the whole princess insanity when she was little. She has never altogether outgrown that.
Q: Has a boy asked her to the prom?
A (Dad): They don’t really do that anymore at her school. The kids mostly travel in packs or swarms.
Q: Has she explained why she needs an expensive prom dress?
A (Mom): Something about social viability and avoiding the creation of emotional scar tissue.
Q: Has your daughter said what she would do with the dress after the prom?
A (Dad): She said she wants to donate it to charity. I suggested that we could simply make a straight-up cash donation instead, though perhaps not one roughly the equivalent of a mortgage payment. She went in her room and slammed the door.
Q: Did you have a prom dress when you were a teen?
A (Mom): Yes. But even adjusted for inflation, it wasn’t like paying a ransom.
Today’s Slice question: Does your tax return include any lies?