Kelsey get low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low.

I was well on my way to living an incomplete life.

There's nothing like getting elbow-deep into college and then realizing you never really went to prom. You get a sort of vague uneasy feeling like you forgot something – the kind of feeling you get just before you realize you locked your keys in the car. When I dropped out of college and got a minimum wage shift job, I more or less forgot about that nagging feeling in the back of my head.

Then one day, I overheard a friend of mine in discussion with someone else. We'll call her Kelsey, because that is her name. Kelsey was lamenting the fact that everyone had recruited prom dates months before she even thought about it. “I've asked everyone!” She said. “They're all booked.”

I unleashed my FCN wit to make a stupid smart-alecky joke. “You haven't asked me.”

She whirled to face me. “Are you serious?'

“Hm? What? Me?”

Four weeks later, I found myself rushing home from work to pull on a tux I borrowed from a friend of mine whom we will call John, because that is what everyone else calls him. Then came the florist: “Oh, you're the yellow sunflower boy! Issues. You should seriously have gotten something red or white. Yellow? Come on now. Issues.” Then pictures at Kelsey's house. Kelsey's parents were friendly but vaguely suspicious. I decided to keep my driver's license in my pocket where it belonged. They didn't need to know I was a college dropout bum who writes for FCN.

Then off to someone else's house, where flash bulbs chattered like machine gun fire. You know that last scene in The Rookie where he hits the lights and everyone is taking pictures? Yeah. It felt like that. My eyes were a bit off after the pictures – I remember a 20-passenger white hummer limo (heck yes) professional photos, and a restaurant. I also remember my trophy date, Kelsey, constantly telling me to suck it up and/or deal with it. Whatever that means.

So after about five and a half hours of hanging out, someone finally got the bright idea of actually going to the prom itself. After a short and very exciting breathaliticizer-o-matic test, we got rid of most of the accessories/jackets/etc that we'd carefully donned to go to the prom. This seemed very counterintuitive. Why bother dressing up if it's all going to go in a numbered paper sack anyway?

I learned the reasoning as soon as I hit the dance floor. See, I come from a background of what I call “morphed” dancing. That is, if you trace social dancing back a few hundred years, you find waltz, swing, line – stuff like that. You can put all these different dance styles on a timeline and see how they've morphed from one to the next. But this was not morphed dancing. This was dancing evolved.

A SHORT HISTORY OF PROM DANCING

The first prom ever was at Cambridge High in 1740. Everyone got all dressed up and got their pictures taken, then went into a big room and talked. It wasn't much of a hit, but the school staff was determined to make prom a success. So the next year, they brought in some violinists who played background music. This enhanced the atmosphere significantly. Prom started spreading to other schools. Everyone liked standing around listening to music.

Proms remained largely unchanged until 1912, when Jojo Spudwink of Miami Unified snuck a bongo drum past security (security wasn't nearly as advanced back then as it is now, in a post-9/11 world). About an hour into the violin music, Jojo whipped out the bongo drum and started pounding. The beat was so overwhelming that the party goers couldn't resist nodding their heads to the rhythm. Jojo became an instant legend. The drums continued to be popular at Miami Unified but didn't really catch until heavier rhythms because popular in music around the sixties.

Not that much has changed since the bongo drum days. The head bobbing had become marginally more complex, and the music has become marginally simpler.

/A SHORT HISTORY OF PROM DANCING

And that's about what we experienced. It doesn't take any skill or practice to Prom dance. You just walk into the crowd with your date and start feeling the beat. Of course, there are a few no-nos. The most popular is freak dancing, (also known as booty dancing – avert your eyes children!).

But perhaps the biggest no-no is not feeling the beat. About two hours into the dance, ignorant of this important convention, I launched myself off into the crowd in agonizing slow motion, gradually turning and stepping in what I wanted to think was graceful elegance. Almost thirty seconds later, a school official tapped me on the shoulder.

“Are you okay?” He asked. Now there are two ways you ask if someone is okay. The first is the way he didn't do it, which is to ask in a concerned way as if to offer help. The second is the way he did do it, which is the way police ask if they can help you when they really want to know if you need to be shot to improve the gene pool. I got back into the crazy bopping and the official backed up, grudgingly satisfied.

Nothing individually was particularly special about prom. It was the whole collected experience – dressing up, photos, limo, good food, a friend winning the title of Prom Queen – that really made it a night to remember. Had I not gone, my life would just not have been complete.

Now all I have to do is check out this whole Disney Land thing everyone's talking about.

Blessed be the Busy

Political science class starts at 10:00, but the real education begins 15 minutes before that as students gather outside the door to chew the fat, compare gossip and generally mingle. At these impromptu meetings of self-interested students (not meant in the pejorative sense), derelicts like me relearn the fundamentals of human interaction. Like the good student I am not, I notice trends in conversation and am beginning to discern some social and discourse virtues.

Before class yesterday, after Drake and I exchanged pleasantries and cash (I owed him for a lost sports bet and he owed me because I didn't go out with his sister; the balance had me paying), I asked what was new in his life.

"Man, I've been so busy lately, you know?" Drake didn't strike me as the kind of student who over-commits himself, so I didn't really know what he meant. But before I could ask a clarifying question, the conversation turned to the Cowboys-Packers game and why the @#$%^&* NFL wouldn't allow such an amazing sporting event to be put on broadcast TV.

Lindsey and Nate arrived moments later, looking a little too friendly, and had a similar refrain.

"So sorry I didn't send you that article I promised. I just got so busy with everything." Nate was referencing an article on Ron Paul which compared the 10 term congressman to Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in a key primary state. I kind of wanted to read the article and had noticed when Nate didn't send it. Thinking back on how Nate and Lindsey entered, I thought I might know what had kept Nate busy. Outwardly, I shrugged.

Lindsey had an apology as well. She'd missed the week's study group saying she was "just too busy trying to catch up" and wanted me to send her my notes.

More students joined our circle. Trevor (a poorly adjusted, heavily acned, tall kid with radical ideas about the role of people in government), James (a devout atheist) and Carrie (yes, that Carrie) already had a conversation going and, from what I gathered at the back end, James was complaining about his school schedule next year, saying that as busy as he was this semester pulling decent grades would be nigh unto impossible.

At each expression of busyness, those listening reacted with expressions of sympathy and general assent. The non-verbal message was "I know what you mean" and "life is a 200-pound dumbbell wrapped around your legs as you are thrown into the Marianas Trench."

But I said I was a student. While, I came into the discussion with a preconceived notion on the merits of busy, I came to find that my classmates were right. Busyness is a virtue.

Most of the time, when people ask me what I've been up to or why I am unavailable for some social event, I answer something like this:

"TV. Lot's and lots of TV. I am even watching shows I don't care that much for. The other day, I sat through almost an hour of ads and the show on the other end was canceled. You?"

OR

"I can't. I have to make money. I value money and the process of making it more than I value our friendship. But I still value our friendship a lot. Actually, making money is a good thing. Life is like money - it's useless if you don't spend it. In other news, I've been taking financial advice from M.C. Hammer. So, I'll be working instead of spending time with you.

OR

"I've been dating around. You know, one night here one night there. Pretty recreational, actually. I treat the opposite gender like a jungle gym and that's why I didn't get you that paper on time."

It is beginning to dawn on me, through the gel in my hair and the thick skull encasing by brain, that maybe these kinds of answers are not socially virtuous; I should just play like a phone and put up a busy signal.

There is one other cardinal virtue I would be remiss if I didn't share with you, the faithful FCN few. That is the virtue of fatigue. He who is tired can do no wrong. Make a dumb mistake at work? You were tired. Forget to phone your mom on her birthday? You were suffering from absolute exhaustion. Call your friend a bad word? Really, no-sleep in days kinda tired.

Instead of saying "heck, I forgot, sorry" or "you know, I totally mismanaged my time this weekend," you say you're wasted. And all is forgiven.

If you really need to run interference, you can use them both in conjunction. "I was really busy this weekend and super tired with everything." The deeper in trouble you find yourself, the more details you should give about what kept you busy. But make sure that these details are socially valuable activities (volunteering at the animal clinic, taking care of your baby sister or rescuing baby seals at the poles) and steer clear of any entertainment related answer, no matter how true it is.

All people really want to know is that even though you spat in their face socially, you still give a care; that their plight is high on your list of priorities, even though you just blatantly shelved it. Now we know how this can be accomplished easily through the deployment of a simple, four-letter word.