Go Figure: My Spirit Animal is a Pig

I distinctly remember getting a poop-brown t-shirt with a pepto-bismol colored pig on the front with the words “what’s shakin bacon?” emblazoned across the front for my twelfth birthday. I can assure you that in six grade it wasn’t worn ironically nor was it a random party gift from my sixth grade best friend. Upon reflection I realized that bacon was my nickname. Mind you this was before the savory bacon craze hit every cupcake and donut shop or was added to every item on a  pub-style menu, it was simply a breakfast side that I enjoyed as much as the next person. The origin of this nickname is lost on me but I am fairly confident it wasn’t because of my snug nose or somewhat porky thighs. I probably snorted as I laughed once in the hallway or something and it stuck the way all good nicknames do.

Luckily it didn’t stick for too long and it was long forgotten by the time high school rolled around and me and that friend parted ways but thank my nostalgic self because I have the front of that t-shirt cut out and in a memory box somewhere under my bed.  I am reminded of this parcel after taking a BuzzFeed quiz which claimed to determine my “spirit animal” something I hadn’t put much thought into previously. Being a fan of any quiz or survey in general I put way too much time and thought into each question and admittedly disagreed with the results. Taking it further than necessary in my period of unemployment I spent the rest of the day searching for my true spirit animal.

I didn’t go scouring old copies of Zoobooks or National Geographic or  anything but I scanned my memory bank of exotic and domestic animals until I felt I found something that embodied me. Many people fixate on common things like a cat or dog, many have a thing for a giraffe, manatee, or alligator and another group of flighty individuals who feel they were birds in another life but none of these choices were fitting. I thought of some weird things: an aardvark, a slow loris, a lizard, or perhaps an antelope but it wasn’t until I thought of a porcupine did the fire alarms in my central nervous system go off. No my inner animal is not a porcupine, but porky-pine is the name of the pig I want to adopt at some point in my life.

Yes, I am a pig. I don’t mean those little teacup things you see wearing rainboots on the internet (they are darn cute though) but a full bellied, hairy, potbelly pig. If I could pick I’d be a clean pink one with pristine black spots but I’m going for more of a personality comparison here anyway. The same way that I learned that teacup or miniature pigs are really just the unhealthy runts that are undernourished and underfed, I also learned what an astute breed pigs were.

There is an old saying that when you walk in your front door after a long day of work your dog will look up to you like you’re the king of the world, your cat will look down to you like you just walked into their castle but a pig will look right out you and greet you with a “what’s up?” as if you are their best friend. When it comes down to it, pigs are hypoallergenic and agree with everyone, are good for the environment and your house as they are like a compost machine eating anything and everything, are smart, and they are incredibly loyal creatures.

Call me crazy but you ask anyone what kind of friend I am and you will see the similarities between me and this nasally breed. I love that old saying because from an outside perspective every pet appears to rely on its owner when really those relationships vary on personality, breed, and the characteristics of the household. From the outside of my friendships the perspective tends to be skewed as well. Katie Heaney describes them as “lighthouses” and I call them “shiny” but maybe you call them Serena’s modeled after Blake Lively’s former character, regardless I tend to make friends with these shiny characters who are the voice of the party, outgoing, lovable, leaders and I may just look like a sidekick; like the puppy at their heels. On the flip side I’m also befriending broken characters who are flaw-ridden but beautiful who I often remind that I would never and could never look down on. In every single one of my relationships I am neither canine or feline, I’m all pig. I get what I give in my friendships. As a math person, I am ever so found of the equal sign.

What you can’t see from the outside is how shiny people need advice too. Yes it’s an honor to be best friends with a shiny person how they can have anyone they want but think that just means their friends are everything they are not and since “shiny” means in no-way perfect, this too is an honor. As for someone who I would look down on? Why would you be friends with anyone who you would think is less of you? That subject is mute. If you are my friend you are my equal. There is no < or > sign in my world. Ironic I know, that the girl who is afraid to look anyone in the eye has the spirit of an animal who looks anyone eye-to-eye. Regardless of my physical woes,  the potbelly pig is the perfect representation of my soul. Not afraid to have some mud between my toes, a big fan of food, and are highly intelligent. With our shared independence, sensitive skin, and a highly agreeable attitude my only farce is how I hadn’t drawn this conclusion. Past this, my only remaining question is whether I name my future pig Porky-pine, Hogwarts, or Pigfarts (shout out to team StarKid).

The Misfortunes of Memory: let’s never do the Time Warp again

You know those embarrassing things you do that you actively try not to commit to memory? As you can imagine, this happens to me on the regular. Seriously, if Snape came after me with a legilimency spell he’d shortly die of laughter, you know, if Voldemort didn’t off him first. One sad account is that at the end of freshman year of college I watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show on Netflix when my roommate was gone for the weekend. It’s catchy you guys! I don’t know what you all do when your roommates are gone but I YouTubed that right up and promptly taught myself the Time Warp. Yep that happened. But that’s not the embarrassing part.

I started drinking that summer. I am socially awkward. I only dance when it’s inappropriate to do so. Those three things some how add up to me teaching just about anyone who would listen how to do that dance just about anytime I drank and just about everyone laughed and (gasp) joined in! It might have been funny if it didn’t happen more than once. It might have been funny if I was really drunk but I wasn’t. In fact, another misfortune of this memory of mine is that for the first year I drank I would never have more than three drinks because I was, ahem, a lady. Newsflash past self: ladies don’t scream “I am a lady, I don’t drink excessively!” or “let’s do the time warp again…” in a social setting. They just don’t do it. I tried to forget, then again I tried to do a cartwheel too and look how far that’s gotten me.

Time Warp

Other Things You Don’t Say to Your Cute Lab Partner

You might want to check out the original “Things You Don’t Say to Your Cute Lab Partner” first!!

If either everything in the world is out of whack or he just really likes your dirty cardinal and navy practice uniform and the look of softball dirt in your messy ponytail and he decides to sit by you every class period from there on out, there is a list of things you should and should not do. You should say hello to him when he says hello back. You should also look at him when he says it-harder to do, I know. You should make sure you don’t have a huge brown dirt stain on your butt or that your shorts aren’t tucked into the spandex you have on underneath. You should at least wear diamond stud earrings; they really complement the fake powdered tan dusted all over your face. You should really look at him when he says hello.

You should be yourself, even in all your awkward glory, but you should not make sound effect or act like a lunatic. You should show your aptitude and strive to get a good grade in the class, but you should not point out how stupid he is. You should work together on a graphing project, you should not do it yourself. You should ask him for help on calculating a certain number even if you can do in your head what he can do on a calculator, and you should not, I repeat, SHOULD NOT every say “it’s really not that hard! Let me just do it for you…” If he is that stupid you shouldn’t be trying to impress him, but you should never break a guy’s ego like that. Remember Ron when Hermione disarmed him in Dumbledore’s Army? Not cool. You could have suggested doing it another way, or traded jobs, or even suggested you take over because he did way too much already, but even if your IQ is double his, you can’t call something he is struggling with easy and finish it yourself in two seconds. It’s pompous. And since I know you aren’t too good at listening to me, do mess up on something obvious down the road so that he can play the genius and point it out.

If you do end up making a fool of yourself, it is a “do” to offer him your notes when he missed class last Thursday. And maybe even let him copy your homework. A “don’t” would be sending him your lab after that, than he’s just using you. But if a little while down the line he asks you about some information on a lab you were pretty sure he had all the notes for anyway, do give it to him. If he asks to work on it with you, don’t just email it to him because that would be “easier” go to the library and meet up with the kid you lunatic.

This should go without saying, but if he offers you a ride back to your dorm, don’t turn him down. If you drove up yourself, you leave that car there and retrieve it later. Nope? fine, then the next time make it a point to walk to class. He asks again? Do not say that you like to walk. He asks again, do not pretend you didn’t hear him. He volunteers to drive the class for a field-trip? Do not get in your professor’s car instead! And if you decline to drive with him to the other side of campus to watch a presentation for class, I seriously can’t help you. Go find someone more of a loser than me, maybe they wrote a book for you. If you do accept one of these offers, do put your seat-belt on so that little dinging bell doesn’t keep going off. Do not sit there in silence, but do not ask him stupid questions like the origin of his email address. Do ask about his apparent favorite hockey team, but do not just sit in silence when he tells you that hat is his friend’s and he’s never actually watched hockey. Do try to be normal. Do not try to act normal (there is a difference; I’m just not sure I know what that is). Do act funny in front of him when you luckily sitting with your friends, this glimpse of you being normal can’t hurt. But do not tell your friends that he is there or he will notice them talking and looking at him all throughout the presentation. Do say goodbye.

When he asks for your phone number to ask about a test, give it to him, but do not think it’s because he likes you. Do be careful that he is using you for your brain. Do not think that he is actually using you because neither of you are really getting anything. Do be suspicious when he keeps texting you about that final project. But also do think it is cute that he keeps telling you how nervous he is. Do let him write the group paper, but don’t hand it in the way he wrote it. Do suggest taking a shot together before the presentation, but do not forget to make a plan to actually do that. Do ask him to poke you if you start rambling too fast, and do tell him you’ll do the same if he starts saying “um” a lot. Do not panic when he messes the presentation all up. Do smile when he says he wanted to poke you but you were doing so well he let the speed slide. Do not tell him he did “all right, I guess.” Do agree with him that it has been fun working together, but do not, and this is the big DO NOT, tell him that you got an A. Because then he will tell you that he got a C- and you will say something stupid like “you didn’t to THAT terrible.”

That is probably the most terrible thing you could say. If you said something along those lines instead of inviting him out to drink it off, I will hurt you. Just kidding, we all know that that is EXACTLY what I said. And that was the last thing I ever did say to him, for awhile…

When “falling for him” isn’t as graceful as it sounds

The fact that this antidote is being filed under one of my least embarrassing stories, is, in itself, disheartening. Willing to do just about anything for a little cash in college, I volunteered to set up the gymnasium for home games. I was in season during the fall, and setting up for a tournament as the baseball team was having a practice on the other side of the gym. I got locked out of the equipment closet, which I suppose is lucky seeing as I could have been locked in, and waiting for my coach.

I don’t know if you picked up on a little word in that last paragraph spelled b-a-s-e-b-a-l-l but that is a sport where a bunch of guys get together wearing incredibly appealing pants and a nice cap over their tanned faces and hit a ball around a field. These players are one of God’s gifts to women and also men as being in even a practice uniform gives them a three point handicap on the ten point grading scale. This being said, you can’t blame me for sitting far enough up in the bleachers so that I can look onto their practice as I waited for my coach with the key.

Side note: get yourself a copy of your baseball team’s practice schedule and make yourself run around the track while they are working out. You’ll keep running because a) you have a nice view and b) they act as motivation for on the off chance they notice you, you don’t also want them to notice how you could only run a mile and a half. Plus, it’s like communicating without having to speak or even be near the person, just be careful not to fall on your face or anything.

But anyway, there I was chilling in the bleachers when a wiffle ball came my way. Now I was perfectly capable of throwing it back myself but one of the boys came hustling after it. Even though he picked up the ball two bleachers down from where I was he took the extra steps up to ask me how I was, when our game was, and to wish me luck. He then winked at me, yes you heard it, actually winked at me, and quickly returned to practice before his friends embarrassed him or something.

Flabbergasted, I finished setting up the gym and headed back to my dorm. My roommate of course was all into the idea and was determined to find him. After yelling at me for not asking his name or introducing me, we decided that roster pictures were our next bet. The wrench in this plan was that if baseball pants were a three point gain, roster pictures were a five point deficit. No guy looks good in a roster photo. Between this fact and the other little tiny one which was me being too shy to actually look up at this boy who I could only sense was incredibly adorable, we had little to nothing to go on.

The actual identity of this player was a mute subject however because whoever he was, bore witness to burying my face in the hard gym floor. That whole day I was certain that this was it: cute athlete was going to come watch the game with his friends, tell me I played well after the match, we’d run into each other walking to class and the rest would be history. Well, I got one thing right: the team did come to the game, or at least walk through our half of the gym on their way to practice. We were stretching at the time, I was in a Spiderman position stretching out my calves and trying to get a look at all their faces as they walked by to see if any sparked a memory, but just as I thought I could be falling for someone, I physically fell. Losing balance in my stretch my face smashed into the hardwood and my whole team laughed at me, as did that of the school’s baseball team. Mine did it with love, the boys probably in shock. But one thing is for certain, along with my face, I smashed my chances with that mystery player as well.

I know a guy…

The chronically single know that all kinds of friends are constantly finding “the perfect guy for you.” Forty percent of the time he is someone who has a crush on your dear friend but they are not so interested and rather than deny the poor man, they try to shove him off on you.  Granted, if they think he is worthy of you, her dearest friend, he’s a decent catch, they are just too scared to realize that a good guy might like them for a change and prefer to keep their heart sat on the semi-taken bad boy they have been craving for months.  Five percent of the time, he is actually a good option but turns out to be already taken.  Fifteen percent of the time he is a guy they met one time in passing either at a party or in line at the café for mac and cheese whom they, never mind you, will never see again.  What about the other forty percent? Well those poor souls are just as awkward as you are, which is what made your bestie think of him for you anyway.

The “I know someone who is great for you” is nothing but a beacon of lost hope. Friends love to talk up these perfectly acceptable men whom you could actually see potential in but when you ask them to introduce you or do something about it they rarely want to help. See the thing with friends is that they actually know us, understand us, and accept us for who we are. In other words, they have blinders on.  They forget how when they first met us we were as awkward as could be and how they never would have imagined us to be such good friends.  They forget that at one point they looked at us like the nasaly girl in the corner who always volunteered to read out loud, or the quiet one who was sweet but never spoke much. First impressions are always tough, and if they took just a second to remember back to when our friendship was born they would see that handing you a phone number and leaving us on our own to contact someone we have never met before in our lives and expecting magic to happen would be a big mistake.

Honestly, if I hear one more time about this big teddy bear I just have to meet, or the cute, tall boy next door that has the classification “Ravenclaw” on their twitter profile I might just off myself. What is the point except to tell me about a great guy I will never meet AND remind me that I am single and don’t know any great guys myself.

An even worse situation though is when someone tells you about this guy and on some freak accident you meet him one day.  Let us just say hypothetically that you were once told that a cute newspaper editor who is adorable and tall with a smidge of awkwardness (there’s that other forty percent) would be great for you.  Then one day you are hanging out with friends as they are about to be interviewed for an article in the school paper.  They suggest you stick around so you can all grab a bite to eat after and you oblige.  Next thing you know, who walks in but a cute, tall guy who is possibly that editor your friends thought would be perfect for you! First you feel awkward because you are crashing an interview that you don’t belong at anyway and then you feel double awkward because you may or may not know who the interviewer is.  Confirmation is just a text message away and when you’re sure it’s him the awkwardness climbs to a x3 level. Here you are, coming face to face with one of those “perfect for you’s” and he doesn’t a) know your name or b)know why you are even there.

Because of these conditions you have a free pass for an awkward encounter. Let’s replay the scene: newspaper boy walks into building. I confirm he is, in fact, him. Friend one introduces herself and shakes his hand. Friend two introduces herself and shakes his hand. I, speaking at my signature 200 words per second, say “I’m not supposed to be here, I’m just crashing, you don’t know me, don’t mind me, I just didn’t want to go to lunch alone, don’t let me make it awkward” in one mashed up sentence. Then in a not so smooth gesture he goes to shake my hand, I don’t. Then I go to shake his hand, he doesn’t. He goes to shake mine, I kind of wave my hand around. He kind of grabs my hand, shakes it around a little bit and let’s go. I haven’t looked in his direction this whole time. Friend one is –trying desperately not to laugh and friend two exclaims “that was awkward.” And I sit there staring at my hands for the next twenty-five minutes as newspaper boy interviews them both. When they start to wrap it up, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom not being able to imagine what would happen if I tried to say goodbye.

This event was mortifying and is further proof as to why two awkward people who are “meant for each other” should never ever meet. If I said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: two awkward don’t make a right. Now legend has it that a different friend, friend three if you will, got his phone number and texted him from my phone and I must have had some sort of conversation with him at some point but I must have blocked it out well. I don’t recall the events of this endeavor but I did just find and promptly delete his number from my phone just now so chances are it happened. I hope to block this for many years to come but I promise if what I’m sure is going to be the conversation of the century finds its way to my active memory, I will let you all know. For now, take a moment before telling your single friend about this guy you know unless a) you can actually see yourself giving a Champaign toast at their wedding or b) you plan on facilitating a get together in the very near future where you will ease tension, keep conversation flowing, and that he isn’t on the same awkward level as your friend. Or you know, the night won’t make it past the first handshake.

Social Interaction 2015, a Pre-Assessment

Along with blogging every other week, my New Year’s Resolution is to make progress socially. What does that even mean though? For the last oh, I don’t know, six years, my resolution has been consistent: get kissed. Of course the motivation behind the resolution has evolved throughout the years starting with the sixteen year old version of me thinking this was a standard thing high school girls should experience to the eighteen year old thinking it was kinda weird it hasn’t happened yet. Next came the twenty year old version looking up “never been kissed” websites and forums to the twenty-one year old thinking “can a person really graduate college without kissing a single boy” disappointments. With 2015 quickly approaching the twenty-two year old me started to revaluate. At this rate I will be 26 with a ten year resolution still incomplete. I just couldn’t accept the fact that I haven’t changed at all in the last six years.

Boo-hoo right? The smart, pretty girl with an awesome family and friends is shy around guys, tough luck. No darn it, I have a problem but that problem is not my dating history. I am socially awkward, self-diagnosed so take it with a grain of salt, but socially awkward to boot. What does this mean exactly? The eighteen year old version of me would never have been seen at a party and although she could have a wedding party with seventeen bridesmaids, her social interactions didn’t expand much further than that and what good is a bride and bridesmaids without a groom? Somehow I evolved into an “adult” with different friend groups who is all-too familiar with the bar scene, has been on multiple dates, and can have a conversation with a stranger if really necessary.  So I have changed, if not in a measurable way.

As I don’t have the time nor energy to create quantitative measures, I figured the least I could do was a pre-assessment of my social graces to come up with a qualitative measure of where I am at to date. If, at the end of 2015 a post-assessment shows growth, I will consider this year’s resolution resolved kiss or no kiss.

First the pros (permission to brag about myself here): I have that amazing family I am always bragging about to keep me sane and yell at me when I don’t go out. I have multiple groups of friends that find me hilarious that I rely on, that I get into mischief with and that force me to talk to people even if it’s just to say hi. I get really ballsy when sticking up for my friends. I can push my way through any crowd to order a round of cheep draft beer. I know how to dress for any occasion. I have really funny days. I haven’t killed any of my dates with my awkwardness. I am a decent texter. I have guy friends. I create those “remember when” moments often ($15 dollar glass of whiskey, communal beer with 7 straws…) and I do my fair share of DDing and still manage to have fun when I am stone-cold sober. I have pretty much mastered the art of karaoke (not, but at least I have fun). I am an awesome wing-woman.

The cons: I still don’t remember that thing known as eye-contact. I can’t take a compliment (seriously don’t compliment my appearance of I’ll sober you right up) I pee, like all the time. I’m horrible with names. Unfamiliar guys turn me into a sober Bing Bang Theory Raj. I have nights where I am acting like the average socialite and then I have nights where I sit in the corner booth paralyzed with fear. Some nights I’m on and others I am so off you’d think I was a twelve year old girl at a frat party wondering why she wasn’t home playing with her American Girl dolls and why those guys were being so obnoxious around the keg. Sometimes I drink too much. Sometimes I can’t bring myself to have a single drink and sometimes I hate on the whole world. Sometimes I forget to say hi back. I never say hi first. I need to remember to introduce myself and fix my terrible hand-shake. I never let myself look for love. I am terrible at karaoke.

I have definitely improved since my early years, but I clearly have a ways to go. I need to remember that everyone is a person and vulnerable and just looking for a good time and not trying to judge me, sleep with me, or make fun of me. Guys, girls, family, I just need to make a better effort to be personable and myself. I have two personalities: Erin is the best thing to happen since sliced bread, seriously I’m great, and Erin is the most awkward person alive who might just die alone for lack of trying.  I need to find that girl in the middle.

I have so many stories to tell and I promise this year I will tell them, as long as I laugh at myself and reflect on my cons I’m bound to grow somehow, yes? Just say yes and appease me please. So no, this year I don’t want a boyfriend, or ten dates, or a goodnight kiss, I want to be less awkward. I wouldn’t be myself without my uncomfortable embarrassing stories but I can change the way I approach a crowd,  where my gaze lands on the person I am talking to, and what I say to those strangers I meet out there in this crazy world. Root me on, make fun of me behind my back, or test me as I approach this new year. 2015 I am coming for you, undoubtedly I’ll trip and fall face-first a few times but as long as I keep moving I think I’ll pass my test. If not, I’m sure I’ll fudge the scores a little bit next December to at least make it look like I did.

Treat yourself: An open letter to the Class of 2014

So relevant right now

Meaghan McGoldrick

To the Class of 2014,

This is it. One month ’till May and, odds are, you’re feeling numb and nauseous. The walls are closing in, all rugs have been pulled out and you’re compulsively spell-checking your resumé (while simultaneously snapchatting, putting off that ten-page paper and planning your next pregame). In six or so weeks you’ll be saying goodbye — to friends, to family, to weeknight whiskey specials — because an Irish Exit isn’t in the cards anymore. Not for four years of college.

You’re scared, (see also: restless, sleep-deprived, and a slave to happy hour), and that’s okay.

Trust your convictions. Go out on a Tuesday even though it’s raining and you know the bar’s full of freshmen. Have one, or ten too many people over (your neighbors won’t hold that title much longer) and stop censoring your rounds of slapcup. Put a ten in the jukebox. Take more selfies. Wear more sweatpants…

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Hello is more than a five letter word

Hello is more than a Swiss airline, the name of three songs, three films, a British celebrity magazine, and a bidding convention in bridge. It is, in fact, an American greeting. It is the most popular salutation. In fact, it is more common than hi, how are you, what’s up, or even yo. If it is so normal then, why could this simple five letter word pose such a problem for an awkward girl like me?

Now is the point where I disclose another personal fable with you but you have to only laugh at my carefully chosen prose and not at my stupidity or pathetic challenges. Being on my high school newspaper staff but hating anything that has to do with hard news, I was always on the lookout to do some sort of human interest piece- not for the benefit of interesting the student body as no one even knew The Streak existed, but for my own sanity.

Well one day as I may or may not have been reading the Readers Digest in the upstairs bathroom of my grandparent’s house, I came across an article titled “The Hello Project.” It was a social experiment about a man who stood outside of a supermarket greeting or complimenting every person who exited the store. He claimed that while most folks were flattered and friendly a few busy middle-age folk ignored him but the general public caught his contagious smile and were warmed by his politeness. Where am I going with this? Well as I procrastinated and had nothing better to write about I put the idea past my teacher and assigned myself the task of saying hello to every single person I saw for one whole day expecting to get similar results as Mr. Happy-hello. I figured at the very least this would be a good practice for me socially and couldn’t hurt.

The morning of the experiment instead of giving myself the usual talk in the mirror I practiced a bunch of greetings to my reflection: hello, hi, hey, hiya..with different inflections and facial expressions. I was ready! Greeting everyone at the bus stop was uncomfortable but not unnatural as I had been going to school with those losers for over nine years and we all knew each other. Saying hello to the bus-driver? Normal, she returned the salutation with a smile. I was marked with mixed reviews from all the students I passed on my way to my seat in the eighth row but nothing I couldn’t handle. Even though the day was going as expected, I remember being nervous before walking through the doors to school. I caught a breath of courage and pushed through the doors becoming a robot of welcoming. I even made it to homeroom with a single, large, community greeting. I smiled at my homeroom (also newspaper supervisor) and said an authoritative hello and said how successful the morning had been to give me confidence to start the rest of my day.

I spoke too soon. The most mortifying moment of my life was just seconds from taking place. As soon as the bell rang I bolted from my seat to run to my locker before the hallways flooded with people I needed to talk to.   I thought that I had caught quite the lucky break when my hallway was deserted. No such luck. As I slammed the door on my locker who but turns the corner but my crush (if you could even call him that). My best friend had introduced me to him the week before in the trainer’s room but I wasn’t sure if he knew who I was. I mean I didn’t do anything memorable except drop a whole stack of paper cups in the whirlpool and slip on some ice chips. What would he think if a stranger says hello to him? What would he think if I said hello to him? Do I have to say hello to him? But even with all these thoughts flying around my head a hundred miles an hour, I decided that my journalistic integrity was more important and went for it. It was just one word right?

I should not have gone for it. As a brisk walk, I glanced up for only a second while simultaneously quarter waving my hand hello, which looked more like a large penguin flapping a very broken wing, as the word “heh” escaped from my should-have-been-sewn-shut mouth. Not a five letter word but a three letter noise reminiscent of a horse having a stroke. I immediately looked down and sped-walked to class. Now twelve shades of red, I had no idea of knowing what he made of the whole chance meeting as he just witnessed a weirdo spazzing out in the middle of a vacant hallway. The “heh, side-wave” became my signature move, like Jennifer Anniston will always be known for her Rachel hair cut, Helena Bonham Carter with her two different shoes, and Elvis Presley’s hip shakes. The amount of times I have intentionally and accidently reenacted that little move is innumerable.

And that now infamous and commonly reenacted encounter set the tone for the rest of the day. It was quite literally the awkward girl’s worst nightmare. If it were a dream I would have woken up with two new pimples, my period, and the realization that I forgot to do a term paper. That experiment did not help me feel more comfortable in society; instead it made me look to it as an uncontrollable beast, non-welcoming, and non-responsive. I was ignored by just about anyone I didn’t know and some of the looks I was getting in return were unpleasant to say the least. Of course the few adults I met throughout the day were always first to smile and say hello back but the adolescent world was much crueler than that. The athletes after school took to me much fonder, whether by kindness or a moral/social obligation, they generally acknowledged me.

On the field of a very Catholic high school however, this athletic code was not upheld. As a first baseman, I stand near the other team’s base coach. On even a normal day I would say hello and engage in polite conversation but that day of all days the assistant coach was a capital B. later in the game, one of their players hit a single and found herself occupying my base as if she were Mr. Monopoly’s hat stuck in jail without rolling doubles as the at-bats at the plate were taking record long times. I said hello, and told her she had a great hit and in return she gave me a medusa-like glare and turned to her coach with some sarcastic remark. She was one of the cruelest characters I had ever come across, and that is a lot coming from an avid television drama show watcher. I stood there as this nightmare of a coach and player continued to make fun of me while I was in earshot a mere six feet away. Just because I am awkward does not mean I can be bullied. No one can make fun of me, only I can make fun of me (and do on an everyday basis.) So I shot them my best you-don’t-want-to-mess-with-me look and they quit it.

My faith was lost in this Hello Project until I stepped into the batter’s box for the first time. After greeting both the catcher and the umpire I was returned with a tip of his mask by an adorable old Irishman and the phrase “top of the morn’in to ya.” The moment was so priceless I forgot to swing at the perfect meatball down the center of the plate that the pitcher had thrown my way.

And with that last comment and a long line of post game “heys” instead of the traditional “good game” my long day of social suicide, I mean experiment, was over. Luckily, the published paper happened to find its way into the hands of some of the many people I bombarded with greetings that day and my reputation of being that quite girl who trips over her own feet as she walks through the halls was restored. That and the forever “heh side-wave” will haunt me, but that, I, and only my closest billion friends, can laugh at.

When strangers confessing their love for you isn’t as romantic as you’d think…

Every girl holds on to that Cinderella moment when you walk into a ball and the prince just immediately falls in love with you. It’s less of a love-at-first sight romantic dream though and more of an ease thing. And to you ladies out there, I will be the first to confess: when my friends are talking about these “stalkers” who follow them around and are hopelessly in love with them to no avail, I am secretly jealous. How nice would it be to have someone love you for no reason? When people tell me that I won’t find anyone if I don’t put myself out there or even talk to guys, I won’t find one, I always joked and told them that I just want Joe Shmow off the street to come up to me and confess his love for me. Little did I know that he actually would?

On one fine June morning I found myself running into coffee shops and diners after the gym. On a health kick, I had been working out in the morning and then was on a mission to find my friend a large black-and-white cookie for her birthday. After bakeries, bagelsmiths, and diners my mission was marked a failure and I headed home to finish my ab workout and take a shower. When I got out, I had a rare surprise. I logged onto my always desolate Facebook notifications and saw that I had a message and a friend request. Upon opening the message, I read a letter from a guy claiming that he wasn’t a stalker but he was eating at the bagel place off the highway today and a girl with my college volleyball team and number walked in and then immediately left leaving him no time to go up and talk to her. He had this strange feeling though that he needed to do just that. So he drove home, whipped out his computer and looked up the roster to find that this mystery girl, he thinks, is me.

Imagine my surprise. I was mixed with flattery (my legs were looking mighty toned), fear (I mean Facebook, really? Isn’t this the start of every missing persons story?), and straight disbelief, like what? Since I had nothing else to do and couldn’t ignore the message altogether, I called upon my friends who yelled at me for not answering him back. I didn’t want to accept his request because he could be a murderer, but that meant I couldn’t see his page to see his face, age, location, or occupation. I told them all that I would do nothing about it, and save it as a laugh, but they theoretically slapped me in the face by telling me that I got exactly what I wished for. A random guy from off the street basically just walked up to me and confessed his love for me like I always wanted and I was just throwing this princess moment out the door? Their logic was sound, my reasoning not so much, but I decided to answer this stranger for no other reason than my respect for fairytales.

I continued cautiously and gave this man a chance. On paper, this frog could be a prince: he graduated from high school top of his class, NJIT with honors, was taller than me, liked adventure, and thought it was cute that I liked Harry Potter so much. He worked on a farm, which I chose to mean that he could make me homemade pickles and that he was naturally muscular from throwing hay bales all day. I eventually accepted his friend request and after my friends stalked him a bit online I started to realize that he was probably a bit nerdy and probably a bit weird but who am I to talk? His profile picks were tiny photos of himself with shade over his face so I had no way of knowing what he looked like but my friends kept encouraging me. Eventually, he got my phone number.

Now I have this friend whom I would text and she would just never answer me back. I thought she was the worst texter until I called her out on it and she said she doesn’t answer me on purpose because of the attitude a give her. Apparently I sound like a witch with a B over instant messenger. I swear I am just sarcastic but without inflection and tone, my friends can’t tell whether I am being serious or not. I tell them to just always assume not. My bad texting aside, I at least can hold a conversation. With time to think and retype me words I can actually sound witty, smart, and hilarious via messaging but with this guy it was like pulling teeth.

He sounded like a hick, but I knew he was smart so again I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He kept talking about his darn vegetables or just hounded me with questions. I don’t like talking about myself (she says ironically as she writes an entire book about herself) and it made me uncomfortable. When I would be short or try to end a conversation he would keep at it, and again I was told to keep trying. He asked me out a couple times but I always came up with an excuse about why I couldn’t go. He called me once, to which my typical response to talkingonthephoneobia (the non medical term for fear of talking on the phone), I ignored it. I then called him back and left him a voice mail of me laughing hysterically saying sorry, ikfdhjsiofhdskf, and mumble mumble mumble. From that, he got “yes, I’d love to go to ice cream with you.” Well this experience almost made me turn my back on ice cream.

After much prodding from my friends I end up at the ice cream parlor with huge feelings of regret. Frequent failed trips to Barnes and Noble has taught me never to judge a book by its cover, but sometimes you can just tell the quality of the Italian leather shoe by the shoebox it comes in. What greeted me was a pair acid-washed mom jeans which were a little too short giving me the unfortunate glimpse at a pair of white New Balance sneakers I wouldn’t let my grandfather wear. On top was a stained grey t-shirt which I’m pretty sure had a hole under the armpit. The body that graced these clothes stood as awkward as me at my eighth grade dance, but someone screamed for attention rather than averting it. I would categorize him as an oblivious awkwardian. He bought me an ice cream, I opted for a small cone as to speed up the timeline of the “date” and but his large blizzard did the opposite of just that. He lead me to the back of his truck to sit on the tailgate, an experience which has ruined about ten percent of country songs for me till this day. Perhaps if I had developed a love for this genre of music at this time rather than years later I would have appreciated it and found charm in the encounter instead of the pure humiliation I felt and judgment of him that I now apologize for. I was being vain, I thought better of myself and thought bad of him but he must have been either very courageous or very stupid to have done what he did. Like in texting, the conversation was a struggle and there was just no way to make this work, but if you think I’m bad at saying hello, imagine what it is like for me to say goodbye.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a thousand times, two wrongs don’t make a right and two awkwards don’t make a left. So that’s exactly what I did, I left the situation as soon as I deemed reasonable and drove home in a fit of laughter. I had tried, I really had, and I just could not do it. My mother pointed out that my father didn’t even own a pair of shoes when she met him and now he is a well dressed man, and I did say that the poor guy was not the most unattractive man I had ever met but I swear there wasn’t a chance of this working out. I let him down punctually explaining that he was nearly ten years older than me and I just couldn’t see it working out and I laid the idea to rest.

At the time it had given me hope that maybe a situation like this would come along again, possibly with a man better suited for me, but after a couple years of absolutely no one, I can’t say I haven’t considered what a life of making my own pickles and riding horses to the county fair would be like. So no happily ever after in this fairy tale, but there is still hope that one day my prince will be riding in on his white elephant (since I’ve exhausted the horse option) and break the spell of this nightmare of social anxiety.

There is Chocolate on Everything I Own

If God hadn’t intended for chocolate to be messy, he wouldn’t have built me to like it so much.

If your life is anything like mine, there will come a day when your parents turn their back on everything they stood for despite all your begging and pleading growing up and they adopt a pet in response to their new-found empty nest syndrome. Now I am a huge fan of the zoo or even visiting a farm for the day and can watch TooCute! or Dogs101 on Animal Planet all day but that is where my love for animals ends. Now you can judge me for wanting a Simba-esque lion cub or a baby brown bear cub as a pet and admiring all gods furry creatures from afar but the cold truth is that kittens have claws and if I refuse to tweeze my eyebrows or pick a painful splinter from the heel of my foot I won’t voluntarily live through a similar experience thanks to this “cuddly creature.” My wildest fantasies include my dream home, a family of five and a ninety pound potbelly pig named either Porkypine, Hogwarts, or Pigfarts (shout out to my Potterheads and Starkids out there) but a part of me knows that this would never happen and my fish-killing curse means that my children will grow up as I did, raising their hands for having “no pets” as their teacher takes a survey in a second-grade introductory lesson on bar graphs.

Nonetheless, I found myself standing outside my front door one Thanksgiving break fearing the creature my parents now call “their baby.” The furry white fuzz-ball greeted me with the dog-equivalent of a hug at the front door and I have been his best friend ever since. My dancing partner/circus clown as he walks on his hind-legs for minutes at a time, sleeps at my feet, snuggles with me on the couch, and follows me around the house whenever I am home.

My family used to laugh and say that he could sense my apprehension towards him and that he was putting out his most cute towards me in an attempt to win me over.  I however, figured it out early. I was a dog’s dream: a messy, food dropping, smelly-footed dream of an owner. After baking scones that weekend I realized the pound of butter I dropped on the floor to accompany the flower which already coated our hardwood floors was promptly licked up by my new pal, which actually helped me as much as it helped him. Eating Chinese food in the den on movie night? The canine ended up with half a wonton and some bits of pork fried rice-the relationship was mutually symbiotic.

I am notorious for being a messy chef and my inability to close a cabinet door has placed open cabinetry in my dream house a must, but it wasn’t until I noticed the puppy’s trend to nestle into a corner and rest his fluffy head on my shoes did I realize he must like the odor of my naturally potent feet (it’s a nature thing, I can’t help it!) which explains why he always accompanies me on the coach and at the edge of my bed on cold nights-he is attracted to my scent. He hasn’t been trying to win me over, I have been unknowingly bribing him to love me!

Alas, this was all still a theory until Christmas Eve when all twenty of my closest family were dining on fish in my Nana’s dining room and my youngest cousin was running around the house.  Naturally Riley came with us to my grandparent’s house for the holiday so we could expect his name coming out of my cousin’s mouth as they played in the next room, but the word “chocolate” accompanying my puppy’s name wasn’t the best of news. Turns out this recently rescued pup used to eat chocolates with his old owner and still had the taste and the stomach for it. The puppers managed some Ferrero Rocher and a Hershey Kiss and survived to tell the tale. Kind of a point of pride for my family, owning the one dog in the world who eats chocolate like a boss.

The chocolate incident was the selling point. For a dog with such a nose for the decadent treat, I knew why he was so keen on me. No I am not made of Toblerone, but I do leave a dark rich brown mark on almost everything I own. There are bits of chocolate icing in the fan of my laptop from that time I brought my computer out during dessert. There is a huge stain on my camera case from those truffles in Shakespeare’s Stratford Upon Avon, my gorgeous wool scarf?  yeah well that smells like hot chocolate from the Christmas tree lighting and my huge pajama sweatshirt has all shades of chocolate on it from celebratory nights at school, depressed nights at school, and movie nights at school. Eating in bed is not as depressing as it says when in college your bed is one of two pieces of furniture in your room. Okay so Jennifer Aniston has that hair, Victoria Beckham has her pencil skirts, the Olsen’s have oversized shirts, and Pharrell has his hat, right? Well, I have chocolate, judge me.

Maybe I should see a hypnotist or something but as far as I am concerned as long as I can successfully for forty days without the delicious stuff every lent I am no addict. If I weren’t this way my lovable pouch Riley, formerly named Mu-Mu (stupid neglective owners before us), sometimes called Honey Mu-Mu, otherwise known as Bear, wouldn’t love me as much as he does, and that just wouldn’t do. I know I denied him at first but even though there is no room for this 5’ 10” body in my little twin size bed, I will always make room for my favorite chocolate-imprinted accessory.