“How about another smile the happy couple?” said Rod Richter’s enthusiastic mother.
“Promise this is the last one?” said Rod. “My jaw muscles can only take so much.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Sherry Hopkins, his girlfriend and prom date. “You smile more when Coach Whitman cancels track practice.”
“You’re not helping, Sherry,” he said while still smiling for the camera.
It was a momentous, but tedious moment, at least for parents. Rod was about to go to his senior prom. Finals were over. College applications had been submitted and acceptance letters had been received. The hardest, most stressful parts of high school were almost over. He and everyone else at Grovesberg High School had earned one night of fun and partying.
Despite the annoyance he felt from his parents’ wanting a picture from every possible angle, he still smiled and held his girlfriend close. He and Sherry had already been through this with her parents when he picked her up. He barely had any time to admire the beautiful black dress she’d bought or the fresh highlights she’d put in her hair. Both their parents still tried to make it about them.