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…

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.

One Hundred Days Until Graduation…and why who you become in college is determined by a salad bar

So when I was seventeen I made a poor decision: I chose a college that was smaller than my high school. At the time it was the safe and comfortable thing to do and all of the perks like small class sizes, getting to know everyone on campus, and making a home in a place where everyone knows your name outweighed the negatives such as everyone knowing every bit of drama that goes on, having the same monotone professor semester after semester, and everyone from the drama club to the lacrosse team knowing who made out with Joe Schmo on Saturday night. Basically, my school is a high school.
Name one thing more “high school” than the cafeteria. Seriously, the social food chain that exists in every suburban high school is just elevated to the college level. With only one dining hall to fill our constantly expanding stomachs, the only place where the whole school comes together is in the cafeteria. Coincidentally, the cafeteria was where I learned my first big lesson at this university: do not sit on the right side of the cafe. Split only by a salad bar, the right and left sides of the cafe represent the biggest form of social hierarchy at this school. The left side for athletes and members of Greek life, and the right side for all the NARPs (non-athletic regular people), theater majors, science majors, and professors. Not to offend anybody, I have friends on both sides of the great salad divide, but if you are a left-sider, you would so much as surrender your plate of cheesy fries to the conveyor belt and grab an apple to-go rather than have to sit at a table on the other side.
I am fully convinced that it’s those who sit on the right side that enjoy college more than us left-siders. They are the ones up socializing in dorm rooms till four am, climbing trees, playing campus wide Humans vs. Zombies and Ultimate Frisbee for sport. But it is the collection of athletes and Greeks who you find at open bar on Thursdays with their fake ID, at karaoke nights, and that very same group of people at any house party you’ve been to. This being said, the annual celebration of the hundred days till graduation mark is the one time that both sides of the ridiculously divided groups socialize together, without the display of iceberg lettuce and humus standing between.
My bestie and I showed up at a time we thought was acceptable to realize we had stepped into a right-side dominant party. The pub on campus with its two-dollar drinks should be the predominant watering hole for students of age, but every pub night the bar stools stood empty; upon entering the 100 days till graduation event, I understood why. Inside, standing around tables were video game experts, bio-majors, theater buffs, less-popular Greeks, and the random wasted athlete all having the time of their lives. Sitting there just the two of us, we listed all the reasons why we should leave without even having one drink, but the obligation we felt to experience this milestone tied us to our chairs. Here, we realized that we didn’t know a fraction of the people that go to our small little school and that other than our close-knit circles of friends the people of our class were near strangers. There we were at one of the biggest bonding moments of our college careers talking to no one but ourselves.
Eventually our fellow left-siders came filing in, taped out every keg behind the bar, and filled up all the karaoke spots, but still the only thing tethering us to the event was the promise of a Champagne toast. At this point, my entire suite had joined us and we were already one beer and one performance of Bon Jove’s “Living on a Prayer” into the night, but I was still put off by the awkwardness of the event. For once in my life however, I knew I wasn’t the only one feeling the awkward itch. There were faces I recognized of course but with freshman orientation being so long ago, old roommates having grown into completely knew people, and such serious social divides breaking the room into its own theoretical cafeteria, I didn’t see how we’d ever make it through senior weekend in a couple of months.
Low and behold, it was that Champagne toast that brought us all together. Every NARP and athlete holding their little plastic cup with a milliliter of free “Champagne” in the air as a representative of the class of 2014 (who was ironically not a member of our class at all) got kicked out of the pub trying to give a speech, and then a new representative of the class of 2014 acknowledged the awkwardness of us all being there together but expressed his gratitude that we were all there, because what would college be without all these different types of people sharing common experiences? As that cheep Champagne ran down my throat I realized that this was it, we had 99 more days to laugh with friends, to see these recognizable faces, to belong to a side of the cafeteria before there was no cafeteria to keep us safe. The truth is, we didn’t all belong in this room together, to some this was their big night out all semester, to others it was an inconvenience, and to others it was a pit stop on the way to a bigger party, but that’s what made us all belong there in the end. College is a time to figure out where we belong, but just one hundred days short of knowing exactly where that is, we all came together to see how far we’ve grown and how much we need to fit into these last days.
Personally, I realized that I barely knew any faces, and I could have written this whole blurb about the small infinity of time that I sat on a stool next to “that girl”, staring at the ceiling, staring at the near strangers in the room, and having a bit of an anxiety attack but for some reason I couldn’t write that. Not after I took the clarifying shot of bubbly and realized that I could instead stop this from happening in a few months and improve myself a little before senior weekend, when an event like this is just one check-mark on a full itinerary of class bonding.
I love the way everyone experienced the night as well. I was in my work clothes and casually sipped on two beers, my bestie in her sweats sober, my roommate let the cheep drinks get the best of her, others drunk out of their minds, and even more drinking in public for one of their first times. The poetry about this was that we all ended up at the same place around one AM: buying pizza and mozzarella sticks from the creepy guys upstairs in the Grill, either as a nightly tradition, a cover for a drug order, as hangover preventatives, or as an excuse to break our diets. Maybe we didn’t need this celebration to bring our class together, we clearly all bond over food, but it was kind of nice to ignore the great salad divide for one evening, and pretty darn scary that this will all be over in a measurable number of days…