The moment had come. She stood there pretty as a picture, and he was nervous as could be. Could he pull it off? Would she say yes? “I pulled out a rose, got down on one knee, and popped the question,” the young man said. “She was just staring in disbelief, like, ‘What is going on right now?’ But she said yes — thank gosh.”
What makes this story strange is that the happy couple aren’t adults, they’re high-schoolers. And this wasn’t a marriage proposal, it was just an invitation to the homecoming dance.
But in fact, there’s no such thing as “just an invitation” to a dance anymore. Teens all over America have taken to grand, showy gestures to land a date to homecoming or prom.
“You have to,” explained Jack Haley, the question-popping San Marcos High School junior mentioned above. “It’s expected. You can’t go up to a girl and just go, ‘Hey, you wanna go to homecoming with me?’ because the girl will say, ‘Ask me in a better way,’ and you won’t get any respect from your peers.”
Inspired by watching The Last of the Mohicans in history class, he wooed his date by blasting the movie’s theme song from his car in the school parking lot as he fended off faux attackers (his “bros”) with a plastic sword, shouting, “No, she’s mine!” When the last bro was mock-slain, Haley knelt and asked the amused, confused girl to the dance.