All week

Today I went to the mall in an attempt to purchase a pair of linen trousers that did not make me look frumpy and saggy-bottomed. I did not succeed, but I did have the magnificent experience of being at the mall on the afternoon before prom.

It took me a while to work out why I was surrounded legions of fresh-faced young girls wearing jeans, sweatshirts, and elaborately lacquered dragon-lady hairdos. When I wandered through the makeup section of Saks and saw several of the same in the process of having their fresh young faces transformed into extravaganzas of maquillage, light dawned. Prom night! Oh glory.

I went up to one of the counters and asked the nice woman, "Is it prom?" Behind her a wholesome and freckly blonde was being transformed into something that would have made a suitable love object for James Kirk in the original Star Trek, and an entire nuclear family (tired mother in shalwar kameez, text-messaging father in rumpled sportscoat, and rapt little sister in Dora the Explorer shirt) watched as inch-long eyelashes were applied to their adolescent representative. Another pair of girls with uncannily similar arrangements of sausage curls waited their turn.

"Oh, yes, honey," she said, and there was a haunted look in her eye. "It's prom all right. It's been prom all week."