DAVID LYNCH'S TIPS FOR A GREAT PROM

Driving to the Dance

Instead of listening to your CD player, tune your radio to a station with reception that fades in and out on an old Dinah Shore number but without any instrumentals, just the haunting voice. Hope it rains while you're in the car so that the streetlights of your small hometown are blurred and diffused in the windshield. Fix your wipers to move in sync with the hypnotic music that seems to go on and on while the storm rages just outside the warm cocoon of your automobile. Several blocks later, ignore the severed arm lying across the intersection. Yes, it was definitely a severed arm. Ask your date if she's excited. Reply that you're excited, too. Hold hands for only the last two minutes of your drive. Once you've arrived, open the door for her. Take her hand and enter your high-school gymnasium dazzled. Continue to let the chorus of the Dinah Shore song echo in your head for the rest of the evening, even as others around you dance to Linkin Park.

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