With April right around the corner, it can only mean one thing — high school prom season.

And with prom season comes prom stories. Whether it’s accidentally backing Dad’s Caddy into your date’s mailbox or giving your best friend a bloody nose while sumo-wrestling at after-prom, we’ve all got them.

For me, there’s a prom story to go along with each year of high school. Unfortunately, they gradually become less spectacular as the years go on. But the amazingness of my freshman-year story is enough to make up for it.

We’ll start the story around March of that year. I was at a post-basketball game mixer with a couple of buddies, when before I knew it, I was dancing kind of close to a group of upperclassman chicks.

I remember thinking how cool it was to be getting the eye from girls who could actually drive and so I played along. Eventually, I ended up dancing with one of them to some cheesy Boyz II Men song or something.

I don’t remember the dance real well, but I must have made a pretty good impression because a few nights later I got a call from her.

I was eating up the whole thing, enjoying every second of talking to an older woman, when all of the sudden, she destroyed any bit of comfort I had going for me by popping the big question: What would you think about going to prom with me?

What? Prom? Uhh … (At this point I was about to start making sound effects and pretend the phone connection was going bad, when I decided to do what any boy my age would have done in that situation — lie my ass off)

“Well, thanks for the invitation, but I’m sure my parents wouldn’t want me going to prom at such a young age, after all, I’m only 14.”

Yeah right — what a lie — I could have gone to prom with a hooker and my parents probably would have trusted me. But of course she accepted my answer and the conversation quickly dwindled.

It wasn’t anything against her at all, but the idea of spending my hard-earned dish washing-at-Royal Fork money on a tux I would wear for four hours to a room full of the same senior jocks that threw me around the halls all year long just did not sound appealing.

Also, I wouldn’t have had a single friend there. But it didn’t matter because it was over and I was safe, or so I thought.

A couple nights later she called back and said she had been thinking about what I said and decided she would talk to my parents for me. Uhh… “no really, that’s OK, I don’t think it would help.”

But she insisted and my only choice was to result to option number two — convince my parents to lie for me. Well, if there’s one thing I learned about my parents, it’s that they won’t tell a lie even if it saves their favorite son from complete discomfort.

The girl eventually called my parents and worked it out, thus of course, forcing me into option three — lie again.

“That’s cool, but I haven’t been working much this month. I really don’t have much money and I would feel way too bad if you had to pay for anything.” Of course, I was forgetting that she asked me, which according to the female laws of dating meant that it wouldn’t be bad if she paid.

“But all the cheap tuxes are already rented and I can’t afford the really nice ones.” But once again, that didn’t bother her. “I can take you to get your tux and help you pay for it.”

Now this is when I started to feel bad about the whole thing. It was such a nice offer, but I still had no desire to go to prom.

My memory is kind of blurry around this part of the story, but I think she called back a few days later (two or three weeks before prom) and I finally got my point through that I just wasn’t cut out for the whole prom thing.

And so all was well and I ended up going out with some friends that night.

I remember coming home pretty late and seeing that my parents were still awake, which around our house, meant one of two things. I was either in deep trouble or there was a “Baywatch” doubleheader on.

My parents glared at me with disgust as I walked through the door. “Was there something going on tonight that you forgot to tell us?”

“Not that I know of.” And the amazing thing was, I really didn’t know what they were talking about.

As it turned out, there was a little misunderstanding between this girl and I and she just happened to show up at my doorstep decked out in a dress, corsage and all, ready to go to prom with a boy that just happened to not be home.

I don’t know who I felt more sorry for. Her for having to explain to all of her friends that her date simply wasn’t home or my parents for having to tell her that I was out with my friends.

But like any great story, there’s some irony and a happy ending behind it all. My parents (somehow) remained friends with her dad and ended up setting him up to go out with my aunt. The two are still dating and his daughter sort of forgives me for the whole prom thing.

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Corey Moss is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.