GeekMan’s High School Prom Night From Hell

Part II – The Missing Limo

“I’m so hungry I could eat my own teeth.”

“You have teeth left? Someone get me a fork.”

“Will you two shut up and look for a place to eat?”

It was 11:30 pm and my prom friends and I were cruising midtown in the Limo From Hell looking for food. We had missed our 8pm reservations at Top of the Sixes by a mere three hours and they had refused to seat us. Can you believe that?

They said the kitchen was closed. Communists.

We now needed to find another restaurant that was a) open, and b) able to seat seven people on short notice and without reservations. We also needed to hurry because the club where the prom was being held would close at 2am and after what we’d been through, if we didn’t get to dance that night someone was going to die.

Probably me.

“Hey guys, I’ve got an idea.”

“GeekMan, you’d better not say Dunkin Donuts again or so help me…”

“Well, that’s not what I was going to say, but they are open 24/7.”

“It’s our Prom Night dammit! I’m not eating a crappy doughnut for my Prom Night dinner, so you better think of something else!”

[sounds of general agreement and imminent mutiny]

“Well, I really wasn’t going to say Dunkin Donuts now and it was just a suggestion before. More like a joke really. You know, a joke?”

[evil glares]

“Puh-lease people, give me some more credit than that, okay?”

[crickets]

“Ahem, well. Anywaste, I was just going to suggest that we go to the Hard Rock Café. They’re open late and I don’t think we should have any trouble getting inside. They’re also pretty fast.”

[awed silence]

“GeekMan, you’re a genius.”

“Thank you.”

“No really, we’re impressed.”

“Well, we do still have a problem.”

“What?”

“Does anyone know the address? I don’t think our driver could find his way out of bed without help from gravity.”

After a hurried consultation, we came to the conclusion that no one knew where the Hard Rock was located well enough to give the idiot driver directions. We used the car phone to call information to get the address and somehow made it to the restaurant at about midnight. After making sure we could get inside to eat, I went back out to the limo laid down the Law.

“Driver.”

“Yes Sir?”

“We’re going to eat here. We expect to be done in 45 minutes. I need you right here in half an hour waiting for us so we won’t be any later than we already are to the Prom. Understand?”

“Yes Sir. I’ll just go around the corner and grab a sandwich and be right back. I’ll wait for you here.”

“Outside the restaurant.”

“Yes Sir. Outside the restaurant.”

“Great. So, you’ll be here in half an hour, right?”

“Yes Sir. Half an hour.”

Happy with this seemingly successful attempt at communication, I joined my friends inside the Hard Rock for dinner. Despite our predicament, we all enjoyed ourselves very much. The food wasn’t great, but we were so hungry by this point that a little thing like taste didn’t matter anymore. Once we had food in our stomachs we no longer really cared about how late we were and how pathetically stupid our driver was. We laughed, and joked and made fun of the whole situation. 45 minutes later we walked out of the restaurant with full bellies and the promise of a fun filled Prom ahead of us. That’s when reality sucker punched us.

Our limo was missing.

My friends and I stood there in utter disbelief. It was unfathomable that our driver wouldn’t be waiting for us after all the other screw ups he had made that evening. He had gotten lost after every pickup. He had ruined our dinner. We were hours late because no matter how explicit the directions he hadn’t been able to follow them correctly.

He was the Forrest Gump of The Limousine & Taxi Commission.

For him to not be waiting for us after all of that had to have been some sort of joke. For a brief moment I actually looked around for a hidden camera and hoped someone would pop up and shout, “Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!”

I wanted to cry.

Instead, we did the only thing we could do. We called the dispatcher (who we were on a first name basis with already due to our constant need for directions) and complained bitterly about the horrid man they dared to call a driver. We only had an hour of our Prom left and it didn’t look like we’d even make it to the club. We felt cheated, let down and thoroughly disgusted. At 1:30am the limo pulled up to the Café and the driver told us he had gotten lost trying to find a place to get a sandwich.

My friends had to literally hold me back from kicking him in the nuts.

By the time we made it to the club there was only 15 minutes of dancing left. We left the limo and gave the idiot driver explicit instructions. He was to wait at that exact spot for us to come out. We told him that he was not to leave, not even to go to the bathroom, because we’d be back in less than half an hour.

Confident that he finally understood the severity of the situation, we went to our Prom.

It probably won’t surprise you at all that when we entered the club, the first person I saw and the first person who saw me, was my ex-girlfriend. We had only broken up three weeks before but she already had another boyfriend while I couldn’t even get a date for the Prom. She was looking radiant in a little black dress and sexy high heels with a handsome, popular and rich guy on her arm. By this time of the evening I looked more like a half dead penguin in a bad wig who had just run a marathon by dragging himself along by his eyelids.

She’s probably still asking herself what she ever saw in a loser like me.

My limo friends and I met up with all of our other friends inside the club and told the story of our hellish evening to anyone and everyone who would listen. We then danced to every song, no matter how horrible, because we had come too far and through too much not to dance. 20 minutes later at 2:10 am, the last song was played and everyone was told to vacate the premises. Some of our other friends were going to Jones Beach to continue the party and watch the sun rise and we agreed to meet them there. My limo friends and I were the last people to leave the club. Against all the theories of Darwinian evolution, common sense and self preservation, our idiot driver had ignored us yet again and disappeared.

Big surprise.

Sighing in resignation, we made the call to the dispatcher. Apparently, our idiot driver and moved the car about 10 minutes away from the club and then fallen asleep in the back. It took three calls for him to wake up and answer the car phone. By the time he made it back to the club it was almost 3am and my friends and I had had enough. We decided to forget Jones Beach and just write off our big Prom Night as a spectacular loss.

It was time to go home and have a good cry.

I was the last person to be dropped off. By the time I made it home it was after 7am and I was so tired I didn’t even bother to curse the driver when he forgot to open my door for me. I had been out all night and all I had to show for it was a wrinkled, cheap tuxedo, a no-longer-poofy pompadour, and the memory of being lost in some of the worst parts of the Bronx with an idiot driver who wanted to stop and ask the ‘nice gentleman with the gold teeth hanging out at the payphone’ for directions. To top it all off, two weeks later I received a limousine bill for $600.

That bill was never paid.

So, how was your Prom?