High-School Sweethearts

Danica and Jamie are set to become the Eastern high prom king and queen and perhaps the American Dream couple, but how has the American diary changed since Columbine?

This one extra short-story is about the American symbolism behind the iconic Prom event, in which American high school students across the USA, in their senior-year, dress up and attend a date-oriented social ballroom event signifying their appreciation of the charm of their school social experience. So how did Columbine shatter this basic American diary? Thanks so much for reading and for all your comments and readership (signing off),

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It was senior year for the class of 2000 at Eastern Regional High School (USA). Danica and Jamie were girlfriend-boyfriend since their sophomore year and were expected to be crowned the senior prom king and queen that year. Danica and Jamie were an ideal couple, lovely, smart, popular, involved, and charming. They'd decided to attend the prom as dates, and everything seemed to be typically American, and Danica and Jamie sought the proverbial American Dream. Eastern had become their ideal memory of school life.

The Eastern prom was charming, and all the attendees were very well-dressed, handsome and gorgeous, and the decorations were iconic. The choreographers and chaperones had and were doing their job beautifully. Even the DJ hired to conduct all the music was on point and the guests were happy dancing and mingling. The catering was above satisfying too, since Olive Garden was contracted to supply all the zesty Italian dishes and drinks. There was an air of nostalgia even during the prom, as people didn't want to forget how dazzling everything seemed.

Danica and Jamie were crowned the high school prom king and queen, as everyone expected. They looked terrific together. Danica wore her fineries beautifully with Jamie holding her at his side nicely. The parents who attended the photo-session event for the king-queen media event for the Eastern community were all very impressed and happy with the management of the entire senior year event. Everyone took countless photos of Danica and Jamie with their handy-dandy smartphones. Danica and Jamie were in heaven!

Danica attended Cornell University, and Jamie attended UCLA. These two schools were on the opposite sides of the USA, but after their college career was over, Danica and Jamie decided to reunite as high school sweethearts and traveled to Venice together for a post-graduate vacation. It was very romantic, and afterwards, Jamie proposed to Danica and the two were married. Jamie took a job as a lawyer in Pennsylvania and purchased a very fine home in suburban New Jersey for his new wife Danica. They had two children within the next three years and had become the perfect and charming American Dream. This was a story about well-placed diaries.

Americans had a long tradition of catering to school environments and social activity. The nature of American evolution was in the fostering of community vitality, ever since the days of the pilgrims and through the years of FDR and then the new millennium, when Facebook became a social networking tech-toy club. Americans simply cherished the notion of socialization and group activity, and schools were symbols of this consciousness. The earlier days of American high schools had similar tones of education mixed with social activity, and this was the tradition that Danica and Jamie of Eastern had inherited.

We've all seen those golden years movies that captured all that Capra-esque charm of American social values and community imagination. We've even seen those black-and-whites of campfire oriented society folk-tales, with stars like Montgomery Clift and Marilyn Monroe. Americans simply appreciate the construction of society intelligence. The devastation of this aesthetic in the modern era with the inception of high-school homegrown terrorism, or high-school shootings (e.g., Columbine) in which American students open gunfire in their high schools on classmates and faculty, awakened all Americans to the notion that the proud tradition of the social aesthetic, beginning as early as high school, could be tempered by the thoughts of diary frailty.

That's why this typical charming story of Danica and Jamie is so symbolic of the American Dream. What sets America apart is its devotion to the management of pluralism, multicultural traffic, commerce and lifestyle, and socialization imagination. Americans celebrate high school sweethearts like Danica and Jamie since such stories remind them of what makes America stronger than any other nation in the world --- its social investments in everyday daydreams. In America, it's the people who build the government and not the other way around. In America, Danica and Jamie are the real monarchs.

"If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace" (FDR).

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)

Reviews

[Kari Rakitan]

I never went to my high school prom (2007) because it was too expensive. I got a thrift store dress for a pageant several months before prom, and the prom tickets cost sixteen times the price of the dress. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Anyway, my high school sweetheart also skipped prom for money reasons. Instead, we dressed up, stayed home, and took some pictures just for us.

My 10-year high school reunion was also too expensive in my opinion, but it wasn't as expensive as prom, so I went, though I know some of my friends decided not to attend because of cost. The problem with both prom and my high school reunion is they rented out a fancy venue instead of just hosting it at the school. "Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes), and the events my high school "leadership team" hosted became about showing off how much money one had, not about pure socialization.

While the fantasy of getting married to one's high school sweetheart is lovely, holding it up as the model of perfection sets up most people for bitter disappointment and pain. My parents met at university, so I expected to meet my spouse at university. I feel head-over-heels for someone my freshman year at university, and he turned out to be asexual, and that was the most devastating heartbreak of my life. I never stopped loving him, though. I love him to this day, and that is why I'm polyamorous, in case he ever comes back into my life. I got the notion that monogamy wasn't for me anymore in 2009, but I didn't learn the word polyamory until later. When I found this video, I wish I had known about polyamory much sooner, as it could have given us another chance to be together if I knew about it before he stopped communicating with me: https://youtu.be/24ri_EJ2IXc

Anyway, it's also a good thing I didn't get too attached to my high school boyfriend, because she transitioned and became my best friend. I actually wound up marrying someone I went to high school with, but I didn't have a romantic relationship with him in high school. We became friends with benefits in 2009 while I was in other non-monogamous relationships and he was in the military. After one of my boyfriends died in 2015, I went to spend two months in Hawaii with him while he was stationed at Pearl Harbor. He moved in with me in 2017 after he got out of the military, and things heated up between us. A visit from one of my lovers helped him get in touch with his feelings, and before much longer, we got engaged. We got married in 2018, and my lover came to our wedding. I haven't seen that lover since January due to the pandemic, but we still talk on the phone. I have another lover who might be moving in with us soon, and being part of the same household unit would mean we could actually touch again.

My point is that there are many paths to happiness. Upholding one path as the ideal model won't help those who find bumps along the road. Just as a car needs suspension for a smooth ride, we need to suspend certain expectations to smooth out our ride through life.

Monogamy works great for some people. My parents are monogamous, and they are very happy with their marriage. Their marriage is beautiful, but I don't consider it to be any better or worse than my own.

To say "Danica and Jamie are the real monarchs" puts them on a pedestal. I simply see them as lucky to find what they wanted so close to home, lucky that neither of them met with serious illness or death due to a traffic collision.

On the other hand, if you are a fan of divine right, it makes perfect sense to call them monarchs, as such monarchs were lucky enough to be born into their position:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings

America, however, threw off the rule of monarchs in favor of elected officials. True Americans don't put monarchs on a pedestal; we rebel against them and fight for freedom, for the right to choose our own leaders and our own laws.

I hope that wasn't too long-winded for a review.
Happy writing!