You know who I wish I could have taken to my year 12 leavers dinner? Freddie Prinze Jr (circa 2003 he WAS all that). Or maybe Zac Hanson, even though I was definitely meant to be over my Hanson crush by then. Who did I go with? Actually, I didn't have a date. A fact that I have somehow managed to transcend in my lifetime in a triumph over adversity.
It didn't occur to me to write to Freddie Prinze Jr and ask him to be my date, or to create a musical tribute in which I make it impossible for him to say no without looking like a jerk.
And granted this was a time before I could have started a Kickstarter or Twitter campaign to get Freddie Prinze Jr to come to a formal in Burnie Tasmania where the highlight of the night was the getting-ready-with-your-girlfriends-beforehand bit and then the after-party-in-my-hometown's-sole-(and heroically sleazy)-nightclub bit. But still, despite my love for him, I must have known that Freddie Prinze Jr probably wouldn't have had that much fun at my formal, and also that, isn't it a bit weird to invite someone that you've never met? Besides, isn't celebrity meant to be about pining from afar? Never slow dance to Chumbawumba with your heroes I say.
Maybe I missed my chance. Or maybe the trend of teenagers pepped up on hormones and chutzpah asking celebrities to be their prom date has something to do with entitlement. I know, colour us all surprised right?
The latest entrance into the canon (one that has included everybody from Drake to Taylor Swift) is Kylie Jenner, baby sister of the Kardashian Klan, who agreed to be the date of a kid called Albert Choa in Sacramento, California, after his first choice (a regular girl, one supposes) said no.
As expected the arrival of King Kylie to the prom caused a frenzy (and a media frenzy) with many concluding that Albert sure had showed that regular girl what she was missing (which was the whole point, right?).
"Imagine rejecting a prom date & the guy that asked you takes Kylie," Albert's friend Humberto wrote on Twitter. "Shout out to Albert Choa for that comeback."
We're conditioned to love this kind of story, it's revenge of the nerds! It's upending the hierarchical structure of high school (though does this still exist when nerds are undeniably ruling the world and supermodel Karlie Kloss teaches computer coding?).
Except, there's something off about it.
Take for example last week's instance of a celebrity being peer pressured into something they don't want to do (nobody wants to go to a prom that's not their own, and even when it is it's borderline!). Teenager Jacob Staudenmaier, who has, as the internet noted, a slight resemblance to Ryan Gosling, recreated a scene from La La Land to invite Emma Stone to be his date. In what was basically his showreel (accompanied by his hilariously half-hearted friends, but let's face it we all know who's the star here) Staudenmaier swapped out lyrics to Another Day of Sun to ask Stone to be his date.
IM ASKING EMMA STONE TO PROM, and decided to recreate the opening scene from la la land @RyanGosling @LaLaLand @johnjayandrich #prom pic.twitter.com/l28R2rv3I7
— Jacob Staudenmaier (@upsettrout) April 4, 2017
The tweet above was re-tweeted 23,000 times as everybody joined the campaign to ... prove that celebrities are just like us? Show boys that if they pester women out of their league enough they'll eventually wear them down? Put women in an awkward position where if they say no they look stuck-up and/or like a bitch?
The public celebrity prom proposal belongs in the same family as the public, grand gesture marriage proposal which is to say, both are highly awkward and also entirely about the person proposing and not the other way around.
And it turned out that Emma Stone couldn't make Jacob's prom, so she wrote him a letter that Staudenmaier dutifully read out on Good Morning America (a cynic might think that the celebrity prom proposal is more about getting your mug on the telly than doing the Nutbush with your celebrity crush).
"Jacob, thanks for making the greatest proposal I've ever received," it read. "I can't tell you what an honour that was and how much I smiled through that entire beautifully orchestrated video.
"I'm in London working but I hope you have the best time at prom and I'm grateful you thought of me. Thank you."
She ended the note by saying: "Ps, I do see Gosling around the eyes. Love Emma."
As Joe Lynch noted in Billboard, maybe the asking-celebrities-to-be-your-date thing started off as kinda cute, but that time is over.
"What's most irksome is the entitled, or perhaps simply oblivious, attitude that allows a person to ask the rest of the internet to join them in a campaign to con a celebrity into attending prom with them. If you really need validation from a famous person, please just ask for a retweet," he said.
Or better still, keep on living your own life, go to your school formal with your friends (it really doesn't have to be the best night of your life) and get to learning real quick that nobody - not Kylie Jenner, not Emma Stone and not the girl who turned you down for prom - owes you anything.
As for Freddie Prinze Jr. his life seemed to turn out OK post not going to my formal (he has a cook book now!), and you know, as did mine.