It's best to steer clear of confrontation in the carpool lane. But it's harder to hide the silent judgment in our eyes.

A few days after my son's birthday, I ran into the parent whose son had been a no-show at the party. Her child loudly reminded her that she failed to bring him because she promised him a different outing. He then said, again audibly emphatic, that they didn't end up going anywhere.

The mom tried to avoid eye contact. I tried to pretend the child had not had this conversation right in front of us. The entire exchange was awkward and seemed so easily avoidable: Had she called or emailed in advance, or even apologized on the spot, I would have understood. Family schedules are hectic and packed, and we've likely all experienced an etiquette fail at some point.

As it is, the entire dance of invitation and response has become trickier. Fewer people bother to respond to invitations at all, while the ease of digital invites has escalated the number of events we are asked to consider.

Earlier this year, British parents sent their son's 5-year-old classmate in Cornwall an invoice and threatened to sue for failing to show up for a birthday party. That's ridiculous, but the frustration with the lack of manners is understandable.

"The rules are still the same," said Melenie Broyles of Etiquette Saint Louis. "It is courteous to respond, so hosts can plan a party," she said. Ideally, potential guests should respond within a day or two of receiving an invitation.

"People do not RSVP like they used to," she said. "People wait until the last minute to respond. We don't even consider the consequences of responding last-minute or not at all."

She estimates the rate of response to formal invites to be less than 50 percent until hosts start calling to follow up. Email services such as Evite have a greater response rate because they allow the host to send reminders, and indicate whether the recipient has viewed the invitation. Plus, it takes only the click of a button to hit "yes," "no" or the unhelpful "maybe."

"Being a no-show is unacceptable," writes Emily Post. Chronically failing to respond or show up can derail friendships and alienate relatives.

But the constant stream of invitations can also be difficult to manage. The Facebook invite has elevated the casual get-together or play date into an Event. Then there are public events to which a person's entire "friend" list is invited, which do not require the same diligence in response.

I've received text invites to parties traditionally requiring gifts, along with the steady stream of invites to events in which the hostess is selling a product. Those do not merit priority in response.

But the guideline to check a calendar within a day and respond in some manner is a good habit to instill in our children.

If the RSVP is dying, we should attempt to revive it.

"I think many families are just trying to survive," Broyles said. "But once you realize (you've missed an event or failed to respond), an apology is always appropriate. People appreciate that you acknowledge it."

Oftentimes, it's not until a person has taken on the financial investment of throwing a significant party such as a wedding or similar formal event that they appreciate the importance of a timely response.

A poster on a website for brides-to-be vented about the nightmares of chasing down wedding RSVPs and dealing with odd guest responses, such as writing in a number of guests much greater than the two who were invited.

"I think this is all normal, which sucks, but it's true. I know before I got married, I was a late RSVP'er too. I think you don't realize how important it is until it's you," she wrote.

Broyles advises hosts that if someone doesn't respond, they need to follow up and make sure the guest received the invitation.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, when invitations were often hand-delivered, the prompt of an RSVP on an invitation was considered unseemly.

"Well-bred people do not use R.S.V.P. on dinner invitations. Your guests will have sufficient politeness to reply without having their attention abruptly called to it," notes "Mrs. Rorer's New Cook Book," first published in 1902.

"Whether the invitation is accompanied with the request for a reply or not, all thoughtful people will recognize the propriety," according to Agnes H. Morton's "Etiquette," from 1919.

That was when all replies, whether regrets or acceptances, were expected to be handwritten and delivered. Anything less was considered vulgar.

Nowadays, technology has made responding easier than ever, which should raise our expectations of manners -- not lower the bar even further.

Case Flatley is chipping away at a gray block of crumbly plaster using a toothpick-sized stick with a flattened edge.

The 5-year-old stops to brush away the dust and rubble, peering at the indentation in the brick. He's digging for dinosaur bones -- a triceratops, to be exact.

He's focused, but carries on a casual conversation with his dad, David Cossa, sitting next to him at their home in St. Peters, Missouri.

"Can we have pie?"

"Why do you want pie? You still have Easter candy," Cossa, 29, asks.

"No," Case clarifies. "Pie for dinner."

His other dad, Bryan Buffa, 37, is a pastry chef, so perhaps the request is not outside the realm of possibility.

No one is having pie for dinner.

Buffa has known Case since he was born.

He remembers when Case was 3 and his biological father, Buffa's cousin, died after struggling with addiction. Case had lived with his maternal great-uncle and aunt until Child Protective Services intervened.

By that time, Buffa and Cossa had been together for a couple of years. They knew they wanted a family. They decided to become licensed as foster parents so they could take care of Case, with the hope of adopting him.

It was a drawn-out process. They had background checks and classes and home visits and detailed paperwork. But they were committed to being ready when the call came.

The phone rang on a Friday in November of 2012.

"We are concerned for his safety," the social worker said to Buffa. "Can you take him for the weekend?"

Buffa didn't hesitate: Absolutely.

Case carried a bag of clothes with him and an old silk shirt he used as a blanket. At first, he asked a lot about Maw Maw and Paw Paw. Buffa told him he was going to stay with them until the judge made a decision about where he would live.

For the next year and a half, Buffa and Cossa went to court hearings, filed more paperwork and dealt with a rotating door of state workers. They felt like their lives were under a microscope. In September of 2013, they got legally married in Iowa, where gay marriage is recognized, and had a wedding in St. Louis.

Case was the ring bearer.

Almost nine months later, a judge terminated Case's biological mother's parental rights. The adoption was scheduled for five months later. They were finally nearing the finish line, although there were worries that gnawed at Cossa.

Only Buffa's name would be on the adoption certificate because their marriage wasn't recognized in Missouri. They planned to petition six months later to add Cossa's name as a legal parent.

"During the adoption process, there were some days when I felt left out," Cossa said. "I was doing all the same work Bryan was. I was just afraid with his name on everything, if something were to happen, (Case) wasn't my child. I had no rights over him."

He had been living with Case for two years and taking care of him while working, just as his partner had.

"He's my child, and I deserve those rights just as any father does," he said.

He worried what could happen if a cop stopped them and didn't believe Case was his son. Or what if there was a medical emergency -- would he be allowed to even see his child in the hospital?

He wasn't going to be an official father, even after traveling this long road to become official.

Then, two weeks before their adoption hearing, a Kansas City judge ruled that marriages of Missouri gay couples wed in states or countries where such relationships are legally recognized must be honored here, as well. A later ruling in St. Louis found Missouri's ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional.

As soon as the couple heard about the ruling, they called every state worker involved in their case to see if both their names could be on the adoption record.

A week before the adoption, their request was approved.

On Nov. 5, 2014, they took Case with them to the St. Louis County Courthouse.

The had explained to Case the night before that a judge was going to sign a paper and make it official.

"You're going to be our son forever and always," they told him.

The proceeding took less than 15 minutes. They both felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

"It was a relief to know he was going to be safe with me," Buffa said. He said he felt his cousin's spirit with him in the courthouse. "We were going to give him all the things his dad wasn't able to give him."

Cossa said he felt assured.

"Now you know they can't take him away from us," he said. "I used to go into his room and pray by his bed. I'd ask God to watch over him and keep him safe."

Buffa said every time Case calls him "Dad," it melts his heart.

On this ordinary day at their kitchen table, working on his dinosaur excavation set with his parents, Case is persistently chiseling, scraping and hammering away at that chunk of rock. It seemed immovable when he started half an hour ago.

He pauses and wipes his hand across his forehead. It's a little harder than it looked when he started. But he's as persistent as his parents. And just as the foundation of their family emerged gradually, he starts to see an outline emerging in the plaster.

"I found a bone!" he says. "Daddy! Look, I found some bones!"

There used to be two options for the high school prom: Get a date or stay home.

There's long been some kind of official or unofficial after-prom party. It could be a school-sanctioned overnight event in a community center, a group sleepover at a beach house or a private sleepover in a hotel room.

The anti-prom is different. It's a rejection of prom culture -- of excess, consumer values, conformity, social hierarchies, authority and its rules and expectations.

Prom has become a rite of passage, a culmination of four years of high school work and play, friendships and feuds. And prom spending has gone through the roof. The national average topped $1,100 in 2013, according to the annual Visa report. It dipped to $978 in 2014, but both the West and East coasts exceed $1,000 per teen attending the big night. The idea of spending that much on a single night to fulfill a teenager's fantasy of starring in a glam fairy tale seems warped.

A student-led backlash was inevitable.

"We were baffled at how emotionally attached everyone got about prom. It became such a big deal for everyone at school," said Katie Miller, a senior in Bloomfield, Nebraska. "If you're not the popular kid, if you don't have a date, it can be a really difficult situation for some teens."

She and her friends felt the school's official prom catered to a very specific group of people. Plus, the music is often pop and hip-hop, and little attention is paid to those outside those conventional margins. They decided to throw their own party.

"There would be no dates, no dresses you had to spend $500 on," she said. It's a free overnight event at a community center, open to students around the area, with snacks made by Miller and her friends.

"It's very much focused on geek and nerd culture," she said. This month marked their third year throwing the party. There's a Quidditch match and Nerf war, along with games like a Lego challenge in which students have to build concepts such as "the emotion of anger" or "language of Portuguese" out of Legos in a limited amount of time. Miller and her friends even wore cardboard cutouts of the doctors from "Dr. Who" the day of the official prom to advertise their anti-prom.

In a high school of about a hundred students, it feels like a success when more than 20 people attend their anti-prom, Miller said. She collects a few donations and saves her own money to throw the party.

"We just think prom should be (welcoming) to all types of students, and we decided to make another one," she said.

It's not just the proud geeks and nerds who have turned tradition on its head.

Myra Ekram, a senior at St. Louis' Parkway North High School, was one of the main planners of the Spring Fling for the area's observant Muslim teenage girls. Some of the other organizers wanted to call it a morp (prom spelled backwards, as some anti-proms are called), but she resisted.

Ekram plans on attending her school's prom, albeit single, while most her friends will have dates.

"I'm the only one in my school who wears a scarf," she said. "I want to be involved with everything to show that we do all that stuff that everyone else does." Her prom involvement, however, will be dateless, covered, avoiding the dance floor and any alcohol.

Meanwhile, she and the other organizers rented and decorated a hotel ballroom for their own Spring Fling, kept it strictly female-only, and were able to shed their scarves, showing off their updos and fancy dresses.

Other anti-proms veer in the complete opposite direction, with free-flowing alcohol and drugs banned from the school-sponsored dance. Or there are anti-proms held in protest of discrimination against gay or lesbian couples at their schools.

For those quick to dismiss today's teen culture as more heavily narcissistic, consumerist and vapid than we remember our own, it's only fair to credit them as also being more inventive, creative and resourceful in expressing their individuality.

The anti-prom is what it means to own difference. It's this generation's celebration of diverse countercultures.

Whether you go prom or morp, a party is a party.