Tea Lights

So I'm at Costco last week with my nearly-seventeen-year-old, and he asks me if they sell candles.

“Maybe. Why?”

“I need a bunch.”

“How many?”

“345.”

The cart crashes into the end-cap stacked with peanut-butter pretzels as I gasp, “For what?!”

“I wanna ask someone to prom.”

My heart swells just a little, and I smile and steer back down the aisle, asking for an explanation as to what he has planned and promising that if they don't sell sacks of them here, we can check at Target – but I'm not driving all the way down to Ikea.

Target comes through for us. Four-hundred tea lights, two long-handled candle-lighters and $30 later, we go home and my son duct-tapes 345 tea lights onto cardboard, spelling out in big letters: PROM?

He drives to the girl's house, lights the candles (most of which won't stay lit in the wind), she says yes, and now I have 345 barely-used and 55 never-lit tea lights.

Any suggestions?