For girls preparing for their first formal it can be a time of high anxiety. Spare a thought for their mothers, says Lisa Scott.
"There's no way I'm going to the formal," said teenage daughter at the beginning of this year, during the peak of her over-eyelinered, grunting Emo phase.
"Don't even try to make me."
She has seven inches on me in socks and a glare that could freeze magma.
"OK," I said.
As Nigel Latta helpfully points out on his parenting teenagers show on National Radio, teenage girls are psychos.
Nigel elaborates, "you're in a car crash and the car is going to keep rolling for sometime yet".
Before, I assume, coming to rest at the bottom of a muddy ravine, where you'll be presented with a bill for the damage.
"Mum, I'm going to the formal," said teenage daughter two months ago.
"Really?" I said, feigning nonchalance but secretly jumping up and down with glee and clapping my hands together like a fairy godmother off to find some mice to magic.
Yes, it was true.
Sophia's partner for the evening would be James Brown - not the Godfather of Soul of course, as he is deceased, but a very nice boy at whom under no circumstances was I to yell "Get up Offa that Thing" or "Stay on the Scene, like a Sex Machine".
That is absolutely not funny, apparently.
First the dress.
Aside from your wedding dress and that really good Little Black Dress bought with your first grown-up pay cheque, the formal dress is the most important dress in a girl's life.
Up until this point the fair princess Sophia had been a complete stranger to the concept of any clothing not black and jeans.
To my utter astonishment she designed her formal dress herself, chose the material and instructed the dressmaker, with me (and my trusty Visa) Robin to her Batman, just in case there were foreign terms that needed explaining - such as "lining", "ribbon" and "skirt".
Next came the shoes.
As formals are notoriously expensive, my sister picked up the tab for these.
"I think the dress would look really cool with black Converse All Stars," said Sophia as they left on an expedition to the town's shoe shops.
"Oh dear," I thought.
Four hours later she arrived back with the girliest, most fabulous high heels on the planet.
Barbie would have died of envy.
Our little green house reverberated with the sound of her practising in them.
The floorboards haven't been the same since.
Hair.
My mother's contribution.
Cut and coloured in the latest style, by the top hairdresser, in the most fashionable salon, the cost of the haircut would have fed a family of four on steak and oysters for a week.
But, who was this gorgeous creature emerging from behind that Thing fringe? None of us could remember the last time we'd seen Sophia's eyes, and what a pretty colour.
Formal tickets, courtesy of Sophia's father.
"Teenage girls are like crazy people," he said to me over the phone.
For once we were in total agreement.
Transportation.
Sophia's granddad organised a limousine and her friends each chipped in their share.
The long-awaited night finally arrived.
Let's not talk about debauched after-parties here, and the fact that some schools frown upon Girl-Girl duos at the formal.
It had been a family affair and thanks to the machinations of her very own Irish Mafia, Sophia looked a million bucks and it had cost only half of that.
My eyes filled with tears of pride as I regarded the vision before me, seventeen and not in jail or pregnant.
That's good parenting for you, Nigel.
But what of James Brown? I hear you ask.
What sort of primping, plucking, shaving and scrubbing, dieting and drama had he endured to act as consort to the princess on her night of nights?Turns out, not quite so much effort went into James' Formal Preparedness; in fact, it seems formals are much less hysterical for boys.
James simply went down to Ace Suit Hire.
Did they have a suit in his size? Yes, they did.
Lisa Scott is a Dunedin writer
