Arriving American style

Siobhan, my sister, just informed me of my nephew David's preparations for his sixth-form social, which is the Northern Irish equivalent of the prom, and they seem extensive. He attends a Catholic college (was Siobhan's alma mater as it used to be a convent (high school) for girls and the surrounding all-boy Catholic high schools nicknamed them the 'blue virgins' because of their royal blue school uniforms) and this is his final year, but it appears times have changed since I was a sixth-former in Ulster.

Apparantly, school kids over there have adopted the sort of American trappings I detest. He's dressing 'black-tie' for the event, which is fine--in my day, we went dressed in casual attire to the girls school called Dominican College, named after the order of nuns that patrol its corridors and dorms with their mean looks and oversized wooden rosary that clack as they stride--but David will travel with his date and friends in a limo, which is not fine. Sadly, I believe the limo is also American manufactured, one of those stretched Lincoln contraptions that some local entrepreneur decided would make him a buck or two if he imported it for this and other similar purposes. Furthermore, I think I saw one of them on my recent trip there.

If school kids over there want to be tres cool, they should arrive at their socials in Smart cars. They're cute and very noteworthy. But it's not going to happen. Big vulgar American limos will win out everytime...at least for a while. The kids are brainwashed with all the mindless American television programming we export there.

Now, my nephew's gonna (I mean, is going to) hate me.


[technorati: proms, limos, Smart cars, sixth form, school