Prom Politics

A Story by Abishai100

Two popular Eastern High teachers attend as chaperones/dates in Irish green dress/suit to encourage their post-Coronavirus graduating students to think of modern dream challenges.

Here's a fun prom-story to sign off WritersCafe, and it was inspired by my love of the Irish horror-myth film Leprechaun! Thanks (signing off),

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The multicultural public high-school Eastern Regional in New Jersey was about to have its post-Coronavirus senior prom, and its two most popular teachers, Amlan Shaw and Teresa Connolly were going to attend as prom-dates dressed in green Irish dress/suit. Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly were rumored to be dating, so the seniors were thrilled to discover they were attending not only as chaperones together but as dressed up dates! They wondered what prompted their two favorite high-school teachers to decide to dress in Irish green dress for their multicultural senior prom after the Coronavirus tribulation had finally subsided.

Mr. Shaw was a popular history teacher who taught AP U.S. History to juniors and seniors at Eastern Regional. He wanted his senior students to think about modern political issues such as Protestant-Catholic troubles in Northern Ireland in the modern world and how such problems contributed to serious concerns regarding social challenges to globalization and democracy. Mr. Shaw considered the Protestant-Catholic strife symbolic of new age terrorism and division and wanted his students to think about how globalization consciousness should figure into their lifelong education especially after dealing with the Coronavirus quarantine which brought out the social need for networking media and Internet for study and work. Mr. Shaw as a very idealistic high-school teacher.

Ms. Connolly was equally idealistic and was an AP English teacher at Eastern Regional. She wanted her high-school seniors to think about how Irish literature and writers including James Joyce illuminated how culture-exchange in the modern age of media and globalization consciousness highlighted humanity's focus on inter-religious conflicts such as the symbolic Protestant-Catholic division in Northern Ireland. Ms. Connolly wanted to dress in Irish green prom dress with her special date, Mr. Shaw, to celebrate the end of the Coronavirus quarantine globally and encourage her students at the prom to think about the future of human relations as they headed out into the world.

Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly intended to look very sharp in their green prom dress and suit as chaperones and dates for their senior-year students just coming out of the Coronavirus quarantine. It was to be a special high-school event and memory for Eastern Regional!

Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly shared with their students classic/vintage photos of old 1980s proms at Eastern Regional, black-and-white photos of groups of students coming together for their senior prom and celebrating the delight of graduating after 4 long years of enriching education and heading out into a world of possibilities.

Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly were both considered neo-hippie teachers and their students liked to make gossip that they were hippies in college and probably met when they were younger and began to date as a romantic couple. They even joked these two favorite Eastern teachers would show up at the senior prom in a classic VW blue Beetle.

The truth was rather complex. Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly were actually involved in pro-IRA sympathies in American support networks committed to offering Sinn Fein linked groups in Northern Ireland necessary media and social resources that facilitated more democratic attention afforded to the Protestant-Catholic tensions in Northern Ireland. Was that why these two Eastern teachers were dressing in Irish green to their senior prom as chaperones/dates?

Meanwhile, after the global Coronavirus quarantine ended in Northern Ireland, Irish Catholic women decided to march in the streets of Belfast dressed in iconic Irish green shirts-and-ties and wearing IRA beret-hats to commemorate their continued interest in obtaining more media and commercial access to world resources in this modern age of explosive capitalism.

Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly often wrote to Irish-American Washington politicians to persuade them to get involved in Irish politics in Northern Ireland to provide support and remind the world that Americans would not neglect the modernism-symbolic serious problem of Protestant-Catholic strife. After all, this very heavy inter-religious dilemma contributed to new forms of terrorism and police brutality. This was counter-productive to new age globalization imagination!

When Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly showed up at their Eastern senior prom in stunning Irish green, the senior-year students were very impressed and had a grand old time celebrating the awesome fact that their two most popular teachers who were attending their prom as chaperones/dates made everyone attending feel generally more festive...and more Irish!

One senior student at the Eastern prom decided to sit at his dinner-table which neighbored the table Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly sat in and inked a pencil drawing of Eastern students jaded by modern terrorism and opting to don horror-cinema avatar 'masks' to convey their complete disillusionment with modern democracy! When this student showed this sketch to Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly, the two chaperones/dates gasped and recommended this senior-year 'artist' think of ways to discourage such clear human insanity!

The day after the prom, Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly were sharing a bowl of Lucky Charms breakfast cereal at Mr. Shaw's house and ruminating on how their presence at the Eastern prom as chaperones/dates would hopefully encourage their senior students to go out into the world with a fresh perspective on the promise of continental leadership.

Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly thought about the depictions of good and evil in modern comic book adapted Hollywood (USA) movies and how such imagery would encourage students today to think about why media images contributed to serious discussions about teamwork, networks, and grave inter-religious conflicts such as the age-old Protestant-Catholic division. They then wondered if they should show some of these movies about good and evil to their high-school students the following school year.

The modern world of media catered to ideas about high fashion and networking imagination. Celebrities and public relations experts celebrated opportunities to highlight media and vanity as totems of great social intelligence. Would such a magazine consciousness contribute to more Protestant-Catholic drama in the USA?

Mr. Shaw and Ms. Connolly decided to show the American Irish horror-film Leprechaun the following school year in their AP History and English classes as examples of how modern media/entertainment presented and re-presented Irish culture and folklore. Leprechaun featured the impish evil leprechaun named Lubdan who reminded people that the lure of gold was linked to the deadly sin of heresy, punishable by death...and taxes!