If you’re taking a walk down memory lane, the high school prom might be one of the stops. Not for Margaret James.
“I usually got my way as a child, and that was one thing that he just put his foot down and said, ‘You’re not… doing this,'” James said, recalling when her father, a church elder, told her she could not go to prom. “Looking back on it, now I realize he was trying to protect me.”
This month, James turned back the clock to 1983 and threw her own prom. Guests arrived in 1980s vintage clothes– big shoulder pads, big hair and all.
“I even had hair for the night,” James’ husband, Stephen, said jokingly.
“There were a lot of people that also didn’t get to go to their prom, or weren’t invited to their prom, or decided not to go to their prom,” Margaret said. “So we were all rowing in the same boat.”
The Jameses said this prom came at just the right time in their lives, after mourning the deaths of their parents and a pet.
“We were kinda coming out of a season of some hard times, and it takes you back to your childhood and your youth,” Stephen said. “I think in this moment, knowing you missed it the first time, you get to kind of do a redo, get a mulligan; it makes it that much more special.”
“Oh, my 18-year-old self would have loved it,” Margaret said, smiling. “Just like my 60-year-old self!”