So, I was at dinner tonight with my family, and we were talking about my 18-year old niece's senior prom. They then talked about a schoolmate named Regina Reynolds who took a calculator to the prom. Apparently, the guy who was going to ask this girl decided to ask my niece instead. So Regina decided to say, "What the hell", and went to prom with a calculator that she dressed up in a little tux while drawing a flower on the screen. Her Tumblr post about the whole deal went viral, to the point where she skyped with Jimmy Kimmel on his show to talk about it.

It was funny to hear about, because this took place at Charter School of Wilmington. CSW is the math/science school that was upstairs from my own performing arts high school, so it's not my alma mater, but I was there pretty much every day. The school was/is incredibly intense, and the school mascot is a calculator. Seriously, I'm not kidding. Students there are incredibly dependent on TI-80something calculators because of massive amount of math they do there.

I think what's awesome about the story is that this girl could have easily felt sorry for herself and not shown up to prom, but this girl clearly had a great sense of humor and must have been pretty comfortable in her skin. I think back to when I was in high school and early college when I wanted so badly to be "cool", and I don't think I could have done that. I really wish more teenagers would be okay with letting their "dork" flag fly, and not so concerned about fitting in and wanting to be seen as cool.

Seriously though, if any of you are still in that phase of your life, just remember this- boring, shallow, cookie-cutter "cool kids" are sheep, and their "coolness" means jack shit in terms of life beyond their big weekend rager. Embrace being diffent and embrace those who are different without being afraid of getting called a "dork"- you'll have much more fun in life than if you tried to conform to what the Abercrombie clones think is cool.