The Unsocial Party

I don't enjoy parties.
It's not that I don't like people. I like people fine. But when people become plural, they begin to get on my nerves. Even my best friend becomes a stranger in a crowd. Come to that, I'm probably a stranger in a crowd. I don't do crowds. Especially party crowds, where somehow the conversational ball is supposed to pivot and be gracefully tossed to everyone in the circle in turn. And I do mean the circle. Maybe it's only teenagers, but whenever I go to a party I've noticed that everyone stands in a tight circle to talk, with no room for someone else to join in unless they have the key. If you don't have the key, and you weren't there when the circle formed, you're out of luck. Since I haven't discovered what the key is yet, I'm usually just out of luck. When the party is especially crowded, the circles form back to back of each other, and you have to turn sideways to edge your way across the room. It reminds me of an illustration of bacteria from my biology book. All the circles tightly packed together, protecting the whatever-it's-called in the middle. I shared this mental image with one of my friends. They didn't appreciate it.
Part of why I don't enjoy parties is because I'm an introvert. I not only don't need to be around people to be happy, being with too many people for too long makes me stressed and unhappy. Since most of my friends are extroverts, they don't understand this. Since they don't understand this (and believe me, I have tried to communicate it on multiple occasions), they try to pressure me to be like them. By dragging me to parties. I don't like parties. (Maybe I already said that.)
This Saturday there's going to be a Mormon prom, where everyone gets to party and have fun and wear their modest prom dresses (it said on the handout that if it wasn't modest then you would be asked politely to leave, and if you didn't leave, the request would be made again not-so-politely) and dance with cute guys and party. I don't have a prom dress, modest or otherwise, am uninterested in cute guys at this time, and don't like parties. But my extrovert friends don't take 'I don't want to go' for an answer. The only excuse that will shut them up is if I have a prior engagement or if I'm sick. I do get sick fairly often, but never when I want to. (Illness is inconsiderate that way. The last few times I had a cold, it was during my vacation.) That leaves a prior engagement. I don't trust my luck enough to hope that my mom will happen to invite ourselves somewhere. I don't have the authority to invite myself somewhere (no driver's license yet, yes I'm working on it, yes I'm sixteen going on seventeen, shut up). But I do have the authority to invite other people over.
So... (trumpet fanfare)- it's the Unsocial Party! Specifically for people who want to be unsocial! And by specifying it as an unsocial party, I don't have to (uh, I mean, I can't) invite many people. Just a handful of friends interested in being unsocial (or who don't have a prom dress, or who aren't old enough to go- I'm not picky in my unsociety) to come over for dinner and card games and anime and possibly karaoke.
And there you are. I can't go to the Mormon prom because I have a prior engagement. The fact that I made this engagement on purpose and after I heard about the prom has nothing to do with anything. Except possibly with the fact that I don't like parties.