I should have seen this coming.

I mean, I have got two daughters, so this isn’t exactly my first rodeo.

Maybe time has a way of taking the edge oft trauma and even the ache of old wounds fades. But as they say, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Which explains what I was doing in the prom dress shop.

First, let me lay out some ground rules here. I don’t know anything about prom dresses, how they’re constructed or what the current style might be.

I don’t know necklines, waistlines, hemlines, lines in the sand (what I draw when the lovely Mrs. Smith and our daughters say they want to go prom dress shopping and which are quickly and efficiently obliterated) or any other line except “alternations won’t really be that much.”

Wait, I do know something about prom dresses - how much they cost. Trust me, you don’t want to know.

None of which explains why what I thought was going to be a quick day trip for the lovely Mrs. Smith and me turned into a journey into the Heart of Prom Dress Darkness.

It started off innocently enough. My idea was to cast cares to the wind, jump in the Smith family SUV, which would somehow be magically transformed into a sporty Italian two-seater while I was magically transformed into a sporty Italian, and rocket oft to Tulsa, Okla. Driving, sightseeing, a restaurant that specializes in cheesecake.

What could be better?

Oh, the wild-eyed spirit of adventure! The devil-may-care exuberance!

We wound up taking the kids, and since, it is apparently the season for it, shopping for a prom dress.

Now I know it had to be done. I know this because it’s what my wife and youngest daughter told me, again and again. I decided I wasn’t going to score any points by suggesting, no, having an impacted wisdom tooth taken out was something that “had to be done, “and was probably more pleasant.

Apparently, prom dress places are kind of like what I would imagine a Prohibition era speakeasy might be.

They’re out of the way, they don’t advertise and you just have to know where they are. And tell them Joe sent you.

We found this particular prom dress shop mostly by following the pack of customers descending on the place like supplicants trekking to Mecca. That is, if supplicants to Mecca were all 16- to 18-year-old girls wearing either Uggs or boots so elaborate they made you wonder if the rest of the Three Musketeers were still parking the horses.

My youngest son and I were told this would only take a few minutes, which I knew to be a bald-faced lie. It takes my youngest daughter half an hour to decide which toothpaste she wants to use before she comes downstairs and steals ours. You have a morning to kill? Sit there while she tries to decide on breakfast cereal.

At some point during the extravaganza that followed, my son and I ventured into the shop to see how things were going, which was a lot like Pickett venturing over to see how the Yankees were doing at Gettysburg.

Suffice it to say, this was not a Y chromosome-friendly environment. Imagine about a hundred high school girls in a prom-dress-shopping frenzy suddenly freezing in their tracks and staring at you. Or imagine you’re a gimpy zebra and you’ve just hobbled into a pride of hungry lionesses. Same feeling, really.

We backed out, sprinted to the parking lot and hid in the car for the next two hours.

The upside, and there is one, of all of this is, apparently, the quest was successful. At least I think it was, since the lovely Mrs.

Smith and our youngest female progeny spent the rest of the day regaling me with details of the dress and their other options. I’m still not sure I know what a fluted goddess-style with a plunging back is, but I’m thinking if you can pull it oft , you can win a gold medal in Olympic figure skating. One other thing I don’t really understand.

I do know that, when raising children and staying married, sometimes the plans you think you’re making turn into something quite different. Sometimes you just have to go with it, because at the end of day, knowing those you love are happy is probably as important as any road trip you can take.

And if you play your cards right, you still get cheesecake. Winning!

GARY SMITH IS A RECOVERING JOURNALIST LIVING IN ROGERS.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 02/21/2013