prom apparel, low cost

“You are NOT going to wear at T-shirt to the formal!,” I gasped. “Wear your suit.”
“Can’t. It doesn’t fit me anymore.”
I marched him back to his closet, pulled out the jacked and toldhiim to put it on. His shoulders stretched the seams to their limits. His forearms dangled below the sleeves.
“At least a nice dress shirt?” I pleaded.
“This is a nice shirt,” he said and pulled on a black T-shirt with rich gold lettering and symbols for Arkansas Governor’s School.
I gave up.
After years of trying to get him to dress up for anything let along the school formal, I quit.
In the class picture taken that evening, he stands straight and tall, smiling confidently in the back corner of the picture.
Actually, I should have been glad he decided to go at all.
His oldest brother sold candy bars, collected money at fund raisers and helped decorate for two days before he finally decided, the afternoon of the big event, that he would go. A bit too late for a date.
Definitely too late to arrange for a tuxedo. His church suit had to do.
A similarly reluctant friend decided to join him in broadening his social experiences. He also had to wear what he had in his closet.
They showed up at the Junior-Senior Formal in suits and ties – and discovered that the party was for the students, not a roomful of formal clothes that happened to cover up teenagers.
Tuxedoes weren’t even discussed the next year when my next son joined them.
Standard dress-up apparel has never been a particular hang-up for my non-conforming second son. When his older brother left, he felt even freer to make his own statement about fashion and parties, especially at the formal party at the end of his senior year which he had no intention of missing. He had sold his allotment of candy bar during the fundraiser as a junior. By gun, he was cashing in as a senior who sat back and enjoyed.
His enjoyment absolutely did not include wearing a tuxedo. Not even one that another family had purchased for their son recently. Not even if it was his size.
Not my “I gotta be me!” son. I did not realize, until too late, that all the time he had been wearing slacks and shirt to church, he had been outgrowing his suit.
That’s why the night of the Junior-Senior Formal he wore dress slacks, his Arkansas Governor’s School T-shirt and a big smile.
When my third son became a junior, he insisted he needed a suit for Future Business Leaders of America competitions. He did not insist on a tuxedo for the formal. The FBLA suit was fine with him when he was a junior.
The next year he shocked me, “If I had a date, Mom, would you give me the money to rent a tuxedo?”
“Sure,” I agreed. I was shocked. Break with his brothers’ tradition of going stage and wear a suit?@
“I don’t have a date, and a I don’t want a tux, but I do want the money it would cost to rent one. Can I have it?”
He didn’t get the money. He didn’t wear a tux.
He went in his “Sunday go to meeting clothes” just like his brothers.