Haunted Homecomings-Courtesy of Canada

Hello Readers!

Today is your lucky day!

I figured that since I'm off enjoying myself immensely on the beach and in Disneyland that I should give you all a little treat.

And what a treat it is!

The famous Camille from

Archives of Our Lives,

has graciously agreed to grace us with her presence!

So without further ado...Camille!

Hi, I'm Camille from Archives of Our Lives.

I'm delighted to write this guest post for Natalie---it seems especially fitting, since she just got asked to her first Homecoming dance, and the topic I'll be discussing today is MY first Homecoming dance. Which just so happened to be the first in a long, looooong line of really awful dates I was subjected to during my lifetime.

But Natalie has better prospects than I ever did.

See, I, like Natalie, got asked to my first Homecoming dance during my Junior year. Luckily for Natalie, though, she got asked by someone she not only likes, but actually KNOWS...

...I, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. In fact, the guy who asked me to Homecoming when I was a junior in high school had GRADUATED the year before. From high school. We'd never spoken to each other, never really even seen each other's faces---in short, and to the best of my sleuthing to get to the bottom of it, he was suckered into asking me by some of his friends who were going who wanted another couple in the date. They probably just wanted one more person to split the cost of gas, and they'd heard that I hadn't been asked yet, so they were all like, "Hey, Charles*, you should ask that poor pathetic awkward girl who lives on Elm Street. What's her name again? Oh, yeah, Camille." And he was all, "Well, she's not very pretty, and I've never actually met her, but surely she will be so desperate to go to the dance that she won't turn ME down. You know, because I'm so cool that even though I already graduated from high school, I'm still hanging around with high school kids and taking them to their first Homecoming dances."

Bitter much?

Anyway, not only was this my first DANCE date, but it was my first DATE date, period. See, again, Natalie is luckier than me---she turned 16 during the summer and has had months to work her way into the dating scene. Me, I turned 16 on September 25th, and Homecoming was a month away. I really had no idea what to expect. I was a dating virgin, if you will.

So there I was, barely 16---the age I was legally allowed to date in my family---hoping, wishing, waiting to get asked to Homecoming, and...nothing. For weeks I was left disappointed, until finally, the very day I had come to terms with not going to the dance [because, you see, it was only ONE WEEK before Homecoming, and surely no guy could be DAFT enough to ask a girl to a dance just ONE WEEK before---surely he would know that all the good dresses would be gone by then], and that day? That very day I decided to be HAPPY about my dateless fate, and made plans with friends to drown myself in chick flicks and Papa John's and buckets full of Halloween candy, and I was actually LOOKING FORWARD to the evening?

That day, I got asked to Homecoming. By Charles, a guy I had never seen or met, who was two years older than me and had already graduated from high school.
Here is a picture of my face, courtesy of my ever-loving sister, at the VERY moment I put the letters of his name together and made my mom explain what was happening (because, as usual, she was in on the scheme and knew exactly what was going on, while I never knew anything) and finally, at long last, realised what was to become of me:

Does that look like the face of a giddy 16 year-old girl, tickled pink to go to her first high school dance? No. It does not. It looks like someone who wishes she could just have her Papa John's pizza back with extra garlic butter for dipping, and forget all about the dating scene altogether, for the rest of her life. It also looks like someone who could use a good eyebrow waxing, but that's a different post for a different day.
And you know what? My facial expressions only got worse during the course of the following week...

...but you'll have to visit my blog next week for the rest of the sordid tale!
*Names changed because you just never know...