This Might Be the Sweetest Prom Story of 2015

Belinda Smith his picked out her dress and is practicing her dance steps for her special date Friday to Waterford Kettering High School’s prom. (Screenshot via WDIV-TV)

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Belinda Smith of Pontiac is going prom with a younger man – a much younger man – Friday night.

She’s picked out her dress and told WDIV-TV she’s “overwhelmed” that she was asked to attend Waterford Kettering High School’s big spring dance and related festivities.

At 41, Smith has been waiting prom night for a very long time. When she was 11, her mother, Judy, died of leukemia. She and her siblings were raised by her grandmother, and the family moved around a lot.

Money was tight, and the family barely scraped by with no room in the budget for extras like fancy prom dresses. A couple of fellows asked her to prom, but she had to turn them down because she didn’t have enough money to buy an appropriate gown.

“It was hard,” Smith told the television station. “I went home and I cried because I wanted to go.”

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Smith’s son, Dendas, knew the story well, and wanted to make it up to his mom. So he floored her when asked her to be his date.

“She teared up and she was like, ‘yeah, I’ll go. Are you serious? You’re gonna take me?” Dendas recalled.

He checked with the Waterford Kettering High School principal, who had no objection to him honoring his mother that way.

“Some said it was weird,” Dendas said, “but they said it’s cool you asked your mom to prom, like nobody had ever done that before.”

A little icing on the cake – or ribbon on the corsage or dip during the waltz – is that the prom takes place two days before Mother’s Day.