Word: formal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...wonders why, exactly, he is nervous. Perhaps because he knows his date but not that well. Perhaps because he's convinced that he can't dance to save his life. Most likely, though, he's worried because of the heaviness, the weight, the very formality of the formal. At this point, though, he brushes aside his worries: "It's a chance to have fun and get away from work", he tells himself...
...house formal actually begins two days prior. It begins on a sunny Friday inside Keezer's Formalwear where he goes to pick up some accessories. He's been to a few of these before and at this point he's used to the incipient nervousness creeping upward from the base of his stomach...
...days later, he's trying not to think about the formal. As he sees other people in his house and from other houses already in their tuxes at three in the afternoon, his nervousness goes up a few notches. Why is he nervous now? Hasn't he had all weekend to allay his fears...
...facade of the black wool, silk and leather, he realizes, the same college students rear their ugly heads. In fact, by the end of the evening when he hears a women screaming incoherently on the bus that returns him to school, he feels somewhat indignant. "What kind of formal is this?" he insists. What about the dignified manner with which adults at formal balls conduct themselves? He is struck by the sharp contrast between formal clothing and decidedly casual behavior...
...what of formal commemoration--of heroes, wars, political events? Many would concur that the one completely successful U.S. memorial in the past quarter-century is in Washington and commemorates the American dead of the Vietnam War. It was designed by a then unknown 21-year-old architecture student named Maya Lin, and when it was chosen in 1981, it was met by a barrage of criticism from those on the right who felt that because it didn't have bronze figures in it, it somehow dishonored the dead. It consisted of nothing but the names of the 58,000 dead...