Don't You Hate It When...

Okay, so I'm going to try to enter this contest ONE MORE TIME to see if I can win. There's a pretty great prize this time and so I am shamefully going to beg, plead and even grovel if I have to! Please, please!!! Go vote for me, okay? (Voting's on Thursday, I think)
Ahem. Enough of that...
So, don't you hate it when the Good Lord above decides to teach you a lesson? My whole life my parents, church leaders, and anyone else who wanted to, taught me that I really should wait to date until I was 16 years old. Why? I don't know - apparently you're more mature at 16 than at 15. Anyway, I was 15 years and 10 1/2 months old and it was homecoming time. My friend had a boyfriend coming down from somewhere up in hillbilly country and was bringing some of his own friends along. Denise begged me to go with one of his buddies so that they wouldn't feel dumb tagging along with her boyfriend. Maybe it's like girls who have to go to the bathroom in three's - he couldn't come down from his shack on the hill unless he had one of his shootin' buddies with him. So I begged my mom to go. I reasoned with her by explaining that 45 days really wasn't that long until my birthday. I was practically 16 already and if she couldn't trust me right then why would she trust me in a month and a half? I gave her the puppy dog eyes and the pouty lip until she caved. YES! My first date! Denise promised that "Ross" was a hottie. He was really tall and had dark hair with blue eyes. He sounded dreamy...
So I went to the dress shop and picked out my beautiful (and poofy) dress. It had black velvet on the top and green shimmery-ish material on the bottom. (Hey, in the 90's it was totally hot) I even went with another friend to go get my hair done. I was going to look per-fect. One problem. My nails resemble those of a newborn baby's. They're very thin and soft and they bend in all sorts of ways without breaking. They're always looking kind of crummy so I had decided that I was going to put on do-it-yourself fake nails. NOW I looked perfect! We were all sitting at the dinner table at Denise's parent's home - the girls dressed in our fluffy and puffy dresses with me in my highly painted and polished fake nails, the guys were wearing brand new pairs of blue jeans with a sparkling white set of high-top tennis shoes - we were being served a gourmet meal of baked chicken, mashed potatoes, Rhode's rolls and canned corn. I was a little nervous and so refused to look at my date. (I figured out later that I should've demanded a picture before I said yes... just think of all of the images the words "neanderthal" or "cave man" bring up and you've pretty much got a mental image of Ross.) Anyway, as I was reaching for the Pyrex bowl filled with steaming corn one of my Lee Press-On nails decided to make a run for it. The dumb thing popped off and flew across the table and landed in someone's potato flakes! I quickly ripped the rest of my nails off so that no one would know who the nail belonged to while giggling so hard that I nearly peed my pants. Thankfully, the only evidence left was the pile of painted plastic laying scattered on the floor under my chair as I got up to leave for the dance... I can just picture the Lord up in Heaven lauging his keester off and muttering to himself, "That should teach her a lesson or two!"