And finally...our number one endurance...
Poopy Tom
Ya know what? On second thought, perhaps it's best we just leave that one there...
And--WE MADE IT! HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY! We are accepting gifts and party invitaions...
Cookie Stealer
How to translate this ecstasy into words? "She" sits in the middle of the floor, smack in the center of the walkway--Indian-style on her coat. It's jazz night--we are in the living room at the student center. Her body illustrates the music--a Dr. Seuss illustration. A group of "woo!" girls park next to her--a safe distance away. They sport a grocery bag from Lin's. "Her" eyes alight on the package of cookies that are slowly unveiled from the bag. Each woo girl daintily takes one. As the cookies are about to be returned to their resting place, she bursts out, "Kai have some?" "Sure," the cookies are extended--she takes the remaining cookies from that side of the tray--seven or eight. The evening progresses as Pithy watches cookie girl--literally "in another place"--eat and boogie. Soon, round one of cookies has been consumed, cookie girl flops to the floor, stretching her arm to span the distance to the prize--her shirt riding up. Woo girl spares herself the awkwardness and pretends not to notice. Cookie stealer cannot quite reach--she shimmies over the floor--at last! Eureka! Taking five or six, she spring back as if to be less noticeable. Cookie crumbs drop. Cookie stealer stands and arranges her coat to cover the mess. She lays down, flat on her back, her shirt riding again, a look of pure contentment spread over her face. Pithy definitely needs some of those cookies...
The following two slots require an apology to our gentle readers beforehand. We felt violated too.
I Am Fifty Going on Seventeen
She must be fifty at least, this woman in Prudie's drawing class. Not the good kind of fifty--the kind of too much cigarettes, alcohol, and unhealthy body image. It takes a lot to make a fifty-year-old like this. As if to mitigate her loud and insensitive personality, Fifty dresses to display the wares--give the world a 'lil summin summin. She has shoehorned herself into a white tube shirt--thanks to gravity and butter--over which she wears a full button shirt tied at the waist. When she sits, oh word!, BOING! (sorry, it had to be said)--the tube retracts with lightening speed, rolling itself up. Pithy will stop pre-described the exposed state. Suffice it to say, that whole "I am fifty going on sixteen waiting for life to start" didn't work in the Sound of Music, and it doesn't work for you.
The Crack of Dawn
It is synchronized. 10:05 every other morning. Prudie and Jerry unassumingly move from their first class to the library or the Smith center. Their phone buzzes. They reach in to their pockets--Yay! someone is thinking about us... They unlock the keypad and press view message. Their synchronized expulsion of disgust fills the air. Tom!--eeww! The caption: Good Morning. The photo: the same crack that sits in front of him every other morning. All the old jokes apply--their cup runneth o'er, peek-a-boo, the sunrise...Prudie and Jerry, yet again, decide to skip breakfast.
Harry Potter
Expeliarmus! Now, Pithy is as anti-Twilight as the next person...and the first knock-off Harry was quite charming. *British accent* "Look, it's Harry Potter!" A nice little hearkening back to our youth. But then the fourth, the twelfth, the eighteenth, and the casting spells at the sidewalk--the ever-present reminder that the theater department is truly from ANOTHER PLANET. In our not so humble opinion, Pithy suggests that we need...well, less crazy people.
Lady Gaga
GenEd studies are particularly taxing for Jerry. Humans like to feel safe--secure, in control of their environments. This is why we choose majors and place around ourselves others who, through the same interests, act in predictable patterns--the Universe has declared it so. GenEd classes mess with this decree of the Universe. They are an amalgam of every walk of life--Nursing students, Math students, Music students, English students, Art students, Education students....theater students. Settling into Spanish oral exams, Jerry dons his usual querulous expression and watches. The assignment was simple--construct a situation that discusses several celebrities; you can use a talk show if you like. Perky girls gravitate towards each other on such assignments--and said perky group is currently presenting. Let me stress--there are FIVE girls in this group. FIVE FIVE FIVE. This then begs the question, "Why, when there are FIVE girls in this group, was the only guy nominated to play the role of Lady Gaga?" Lady Gaga! Does this offense know no bounds? If you were wondering, yes those feathers, and that wig, and that halter top, and those stilettos, and the tramp tattoo covering your back (yes we can see it) make you look like a total !@#$...
Feet Painting
Prudie is in this class called Arts Retrospective. It explores the development of the various art forms. However, SUU is sooo cutting edge its students pioneer their own art forms. One such form, captures our number six slot. The group moves to the front of class--"We are reenacting a episode of Laugh it Up, and plan to conduct the entire presentation in bare feet--running in paint on butcher paper. We hypothesize a piece of unspeakably beautiful art will be the result. BRILLIANT!" The professors present dubious expressions and possible catastrophes. These are waived off--"We brought a tarp!" They commence to squirt--not delicately spread--SQUIRT the paint bottles, like ketchup and mustard, all over the precariously covered floor. The presentation consists of running around a cardboard wall--on a super slick surface...Prudie sits back as this can only mean one thing. Sure enough, a particularly mobile girl (the voice of the group, in fact) rounds the corner and (let me see if I can spell this Ipicturedthatgoingsodifferentlyinmymind moment)--shwshwshwshloooophmph! She lands in a perfect impression of a dogsled. In a flash of paint--like something from that nineties remake of Peter Pan--she uprights herself, to discover there has been no provision made to remove the group's wet feet to their shoes. Brain over. Insert coin.
Coming Up: Cookie Stealer, 50 Going On..., and The Crack of Dawn
It is December...Pithy prepares to embrace the spectacularness that is the Holidays. When ranking College student's most favorite things--Christmas holidays is at the top...second only to the awesomeness that is the summer holidays. We are so ready that we will do ANYthing to get there. No seriously, ANTHING. As a testament, we commence a recap of the memorable worsts we have since endured in our sprint to the finish line of finals' end.
The Garage Door
Let me paint a picture. Cedar is cold. Very cold. In form, our garage door does not like this. Prudie and Jerry deal with its dislike. Prudie has the single remote opener, and she and Jerry ride together in the mornings. Jerry gets in position, Prudie presses the open button, and Jerry helps the frozen door open enough to let the car out. This is inconvenient, but manageable. Pithy's extreme exasperation comes, not from this situation, but rather from the one that follows two hours later. Prudie and Jerry try to find in their hearts some bit of compassion, some ember of empathy for Tom's predicament of tackling the door singlehandedly, but two words douse our fragile flame: ten o'clock. Because they know Tom is well-rested and up for the challenge (as well as having had the time for breakfast, and morning news, and a copy of War and Peace) Jerry and Prudence opt to revel in the simple pleasure of the this picture: Tom pressing the open button on the wall and running across the garage to catch the door before it freezes to a halt, being too slow, and getting to try again...and again.
Snuggie
"This has to be the creepiest commercial ever made," Tom says as the advertisement for Snuggies begins yet again. "Seriously, it looks like they are being embalmed or something. Who would ever wear one? I think I would rather go with a whale's idea of insulation." This conversation continues through many avenues--cocoons, oversized vegetables, telly-tubbies, how the name sounds like a diaper--and Pithy has soon established Snuggies as the number one fashion faux pas--except for maybe white cotton knee socks with leather crocs. "Seriously WHO would wear one?" Apparently a girl in Prudie's Art Retro class...
Breakfast Girl
The beginning of each semester (especially fall) provides many opportunities for upperclassman to look at the newbs and, with an air of ethereal superiority, comment about how wonderful it is to no longer be a freshman. This may seem callous--a denial of their roots. And yet, upon seeing breakfast girl in Music Theory, Jerry finds a moment for prayer and reflection: "Thank You, God for seeing fit to make me a Junior..." She comes to class five minutes early and begins her preparations for morning meal. At nine (the beginning of class) she pounces--peanut butter and celery, yogurt, a suspicious container of fruitcoctail and oatmeal?--her desk covered in crumbs, the air filled with the unpleasant smell of food too early in the morning, and the crunch crunch of stringy celery. Perhaps this should be forgiven, I mean, a girl's gotta eat right? We let you judge, internets--as you watch her pull out a hair brush...be careful--it's right next to her deodorant.
Coming up: Harry Potter, Lady Gaga, and Feet Painting
I cannot teach you how to pray in words. God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips. And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and the forests and the mountains. But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart, And if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence,
"Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth. It is thy desire in us that desireth. It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are thine, into days which are thine also. We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us: Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all."
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Pithy will go out of our way to step on a crunchy leaf. It crackles underfoot, and we say thankyou for the childish delight that takes some sting out of the passing summer. We notice how our list of gratefuls has changed with us. As kids, we rested in the comfortable security of family, the quiet joy of imagination and the assured consistency. Each cold afternoon snuggled with a warm book, and cocoa was the surest recipe for a smile. Thanksgiving meant a day of turkey, orange rolls, cleaning--being together. We were grateful to those who filled our Christmas stockings, sometimes forgetting to thank God for filling our stockings with legs.
These days we actively focus our gratitude. Acknowledging that the hardest arithmetic to master is that of counting blessings, we work on our simple thankyous. It's not snowing right now. Facebook provides means of chatting--even when we are only ten feet apart. There is just enough toilet paper on the role. I got the last piece of lunch meat and someone left five dollars worth of gas in the car. I get the "sweet spot" in the parking lot at school before my eight o clock. Children's smiles still make us smile. That, despite it all, we still know that God will be there to help us get through to Christmas.
At times our internal light goes out. We rely on those around us to rekindle us with a little spark of their own. This year, we have cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lit our flame.
We remind ourselves that if the only prayer we ever said was that of "thank you"--that would be enough, hoping also to remember that saying the words is the easy part. The highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them--each breath drawn a reminder of how preciously fragile is our next.
"Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise."
George Herbert
Sometimes we lose. Life--the world, and everything--presses in. Struggling like an underwater swimmer, we kick towards the surface, only to have it remain stationary, teasing just beyond our grasp. We become immune to these forces, eventually starved for air and numb. Many get stuck here in this halfway place--that tenuous balance that teeters on the edge of complete uproot. It becomes second nature and soon evolves into the real.
Jerry often walks home--thirty minutes of reflection to study fellow tight rope walkers. Some seem to say "I...can't --- breathe...."--their eyes clouded as they keep to their side of the walk. So many bodies moving in the unconscious orbits of their lives. Alienation widens the sidewalk--we move on.
Sometimes we lose. But sometimes, one or two break the surface. The car passes and I see the driver. Windows up, radio up, she sings--smiling. She probably doesn't sound good--the notes stretching the limits of her accountant abilities. But for the 3:26 of the music, she breathes in the simple freedom nostalgic of childhood--where we just go for it. We go for the cookie, we dance because we can't help it, we pick the booger, we don't laugh--we giggle, we remember to slow down and love someone.
We move on. The song finishes and we sink back to that place where we laugh at those who sing, where those who dance look funny, and we are safe in our isolation. We settle in to wait for the next moment where our guard weakens, where we can shore the 3:26 against our ruin.
So, the dryer pretends it's a magician--in a Woody-Allen, garage-hobby kinda way. This puff began as Tom's sock, but, as is apt to happen with semi-professionals, something went terribly wrong. BTW, this black magic is the result of ONE batch of practically-clean-made-out-of-only-the-tightest-fibers clothes. Our task was to remove this testament to don'ttrythisathome in one piece and preserve it for you, internets. Your job, to offer the best tagline for our photos. Begin!
Peter sat. The bench had lost its initial comfort, and he intermittently shifted his weight to accommodate the impartial slats beneath him. Peter waited. The sun moved--shadows developed and morphed into the October twilight of almost night. Peter waited.
The cold air did not agree with Peter. He hunched over in an attempt to preserve heat, the length of his forgetful hair obscuring his equally forgetful face. A passerby might have thought him a vagrant (the hunch of his shoulders belying his young form) waiting to be towed from the street--another hour or so and he would be.
C'mon, he thought. C'mon. The wind teased--finding each isolated pocket of warmth and snuffing it away with the last of the season's burnt leaves. The overly excited tumble of their frisk past his feet suppressed the silence, and his cold ears strained to hear the expectant limp and stick.
Peter sat. Peter waited.
Peter sat to count the minutes. Seven, four, two. Peter started. At last, footsteps--a long heavy, followed by the quick step and stick sounded the gait. Peter straightened...
As he sits straight up in bed Peter realizes that he had been sleeping, it was only a dream.
The windowless room is dark and muggy with only the light from his monitor to let him check his surroundings. Peter glances around the room, but everything appears to be in order. Everything, except that noise.
Peter closes his eyes and listens closely. It doesn't take him long to realize that the sound is growing closer.
But that suddenly becomes unimportant when he notices the dull pain slowly working its way from his hind end Peter opens his eyes and looks down only to see that he is sitting on the bench again.
"Maybe the acid was a bad idea" Peter thinks to himself as he readjusts on the hard wooden bench and looks around to see where that noise is coming from.
Ah yes, the sound of approaching steps walking briskly in the autumn chill. A rhythmic clicking with each step announced the gender of her curious gait. Peter raised his nodding head, awakened by an effervescent curiosity that grew more urgent from the perfumed scent wafting in the breeze before her. Questions flooded his brain, immediately cleansed from all previous thought, as his wonderment commanded further analysis. Who was this sprightly coiffed co-ed with an independent air that seemed to say, “Eyes to yourself, you somnambulistic nerd. You deserve not a single glance from these emerald sirens that would only haunt you for the rest of your bewildered life.”
Questions! Time froze as his life passed before him, a panorama of memories, hopes and dreams flooded his brain. Was this the epiphany that fate had promised him? Was this that crucial moment in time that exacts winners from losers, and calls men forth from the disparagement of failed hopes to a new beginning? Peter somehow knew this moment would change his life forever if he could only summon the courage to seize it.
Then in an instant, as fate would have it she tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and went down to her knees as her purse fell open scattering the contents—a paper lined with numbers fluttered in the breeze and landed in a pile of leaves beyond her gaze. In an instant and without thinking, Peter jumped up and quickly offered her his hand noticing her bruised knee. Awkwardly, she took his hand and tried to compose herself, withdrawing it to brush the fractured leaves from her torso. “Are you OK” Peter queried as he gathered the scattered items and returned them to her purse. “Yes, I’m fine” she protested, as she quickly thanked him and with an embarrassed look gingerly continued on her way…
It happened so fast, Peter thought. I didn’t even get her name. Who was this creature and why did fate call forth this unlikely event? Peter analyzed the past few moments over and over as he began to walk across the fading grass strewn with wine colored fragments of passing summer’s glory. Then he saw it! Almost by accident as he brushed through a pile of leaves hiding the paper he now remembered. Curiously he picked it up, wondering if it would somehow restore his failed attempt to triumph over his own self effacing passiveness. Five lines of six numbers each were printed above a barcode. It was a “Lottery Ticket” without any doubt and on the back a phone number scribbled in pencil.
Peter paused with measured thought. Perhaps he would call the number after this night's drawing---Perhaps another day would help him think more clearly. Who knows whether fate would share its millions with him, with her or with them both…?
Your attentions overwhelm--at the risk of embarrassment, we move on.
Sometimes we get bored--or stranded in the library waiting for a ride home. Sometimes each piece of the day seems to lend itself to that moment when you have to put your books aside--shelf Saussure and Lacan, and try the world on in a different size. This week, we tried poetry...
Not Writing: Three Haikus
New facebook alert
distracts eyes eager for being
Sorry, facebook said."
It is loud. Tele
vision off--reconciled
account with roommate.
Easily forgot
are the simple pieces that
teach me contentment.
Let's
let's argue--
let's tease the painful, gasping meaning
from each tortured line.
let's pretend it can go anywhere--
that he stopped in the woods, snowy or otherwise,
for a deep psychoanalysis of his
cold, muffled life. The woods are deep--he
talks to horses there.
bethespoon. Bend each longing sunflower
and poisonous motivation of experience.
Let's rename the world. Suns are years.
roads are choices. flirts are deers with doe brown eyes.
Here we care about undiscovered
rocks at the bottom of a cave
buried under the ocean
because they are
beautiful...
or are
they
?
ask keats...
Wait, don't--we don't care about keats.
keats' fears are realized--he's dead.
along with every other pen wielder
since eden. It's about
you. it's about me. it's about reading.
crazy? confusing?
yes--here
we listen to guys who talk to horses--
alone, in the dark, cold--snowy--
woods. Miles and sleep.
Round Robin. Anything goes. The idea is that each reader adds to the story by posting a comment developing the plot and characters. Every so often, the comments will be proofread and added to the original story. Let's see where we can go...we are excited!
Peter sat. The bench had lost its initial comfort, and he intermittently shifted his weight to accommodate the impartial slats beneath him. Peter waited. The sun moved--shadows developed and morphed into the October twilight of almost night. Peter waited.
The cold air did not agree with Peter. He hunched over in an attempt to preserve heat, the length of his forgetful hair obscuring his equally forgetful face. A passerby might have thought him a vagrant (the hunch of his shoulders belying his young form) waiting to be towed from the street--another hour or so and he would be.
C'mon, he thought. C'mon. The wind teased--finding each isolated pocket of warmth and snuffing it away with the last of the season's burnt leaves. The overly excited tumble of their frisk past his feet suppressed the silence, and his cold ears strained to hear the expectant limp and stick.
Peter sat. Peter waited.
Peter sat to count the minutes. Seven, four, two. Peter started. At last, footsteps--a long heavy, followed by the quick step and stick, sounded the gait. Peter straightened...
Some things are fated. Just think, Jerry could have skipped his cup of coffee this morning before his nine o'clock and not needed the restroom at the beginning of his session in the Huntsman Reading Room at the library. But he DID have his coffee--and was privileged to overhear a true "ohmygoshIcan'tbelieveIamhearingthis!" moment.
Jerry struggles with the public restroom system in general. The dingy lighting, conspicuously missing Jaws soundtrack, and the knowledge that you are exposed to the world with nothing but a connect-the-dots partition for protection (not to mention the colonies of viral plague) seem to create a stress counterproductive to using the "rest"room. However, guys have devised their own code of conduct to facilitate the necessary evil. They enter, take care of business, actively avoid eye contact, and, for all intents and purposes, pretend they are the only one in the room. There is certainly no conversation.
Jerry knows this, and was disturbed to hear voices upon entering the room. He was even further disturbed to find what appeared to be only one other person in the room: a set of particularly sad flat tennis shoes in the far stall. His disturbance culminated in the awful realization that tennishoes was on the phone...while peeing. Jerry assumed his vacant stare at the wall and listened.
"No Mom, I already know how you feel about that; you don't need to tell me. *silence* Well, I am sorry you feel that way. *not so silent silence* I just need to get my life together. *voice breaks slightly* No, I'm not being sarcastic. I don't know what I'm doing. You're always telling me I need to get my life together and I do. *silence* You don't really mean that--no, Mom...*voice breaks, sob is heard*...*swearing*...(call is over)..."
Jerry hurried out as quickly as possible.
"...I need to get my life together..." starting with a heart-to-heart in a public restroom while ON THE JOHN. Tennishoes, is not this perchance one of the travesties of your life that needs "got together?" Perhaps she can't take you seriously because she smells the insincerity of your plight.
Jerry is grateful fate saw fit to offer him this perspective adjustment: when he gets discouraged--thinking he can't take it anymore--he will remember he has not been dumped by his mom in a public restroom while peeing.
Pithy officially declares unnecessary talking in a public restroom as an item fit for the "Dislikes" list, and presume to condemn anyone who would speak ON THE PHONE while peeing (among other things), flushing, and washing as inconsiderate. This behavior should be reserved for telemarketers--not mothers!
Hi all...
Around campus, we are struck by the blossoming "young love" and inappropriate groping in the library. What is it with this need clingy freshman girls have to attach themselves to bothered guys within the first three weeks of school? They seem almost ferocious in their efforts to--well, suck, as it were, their way into a relationship.
Jordin Sparks recently released her no. 1 hit "Battlefield." As we thumbed through the comments on iTunes, we came across the following remarks--surely made by a recently jilted sixteen year old.
"Jordin's new song 'Battlefield' is out of this world amazing...All I can say is that it is EPIC....beyond hit song, beyond an anthem....simply epic! Tell all of your friends. This is the best song of the year....hands down."
Is this an indication of a trend in our culture? Is the classic story of "boy meets girl, boy and girl choose to fall in love after a careful analysis of the pros and cons of the combination of their respective color code personality traits and FICO scores, boy and girl marry with full approbation of family and friends, boy and girl ride off into a 5.4 percent mortgaged sunset" becoming extinct?
Please take a second to watch this epic-ness from Jordin and help us crack the code...."Why IS love like a battlefield...?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp7oSHLr3BY&feature=fvst
Pithy stays at a great house--overseen by a great landWoman and, like we have said before, pretty much the best deal in town. That said, it would only be half the story to go any longer without a few semi-gregarious comments about our situation.
This morning Tom was awakened by what seemed the sound of heavy breathing--panting--through the wall in the bathroom. In that half-way place of sleep and wakefulness, he thinks he imagines the sound--that it is just the shower. The sleep subsides and it dawns: there is no propane--it IS the shower, the shower and Prudence as she "breathe counts" her way through the apocalyptically cold washing of her hair. Jerry has similar stories, but we will spare our gentle readership THAT tmi.
The fridge pretends to be cold. Upon arriving three weeks ago, there were two solid blocks of ice in the freezer (and an ample coating of ice in the back of the fridge's insides), so solid, in fact, the idea of a fridge in freezer's clothing never crosses our minds. No, this sneaky ice-caked imposter preys upon our innocence and we fill it with many safekeepings--lettuce, milk, butter, the infamous avocadoes--and we shut the door, quietly confident in its ability, like Horton of old, to protect the eggs.
A gallon of sour milk (and half-and-half), one camping cooler and a drink fridge from Craigslist later, we call landWoman. The response ? Have we burped it yet? Now, Pithy is not wise in all worldly things--we strive to develop in many directions, and have gained many valuable pieces of knowledge--but never have we heard of burping a refrigerator. Acceding to the greater wisdom of landWoman, Tom and Jerry gather the infant between them and gently rock--nothing. No gaseous expulsion of any kind, not even a hiccup. Perhaps not the best idea we think, but landWoman proves us wrong when--four hours later--the fridge at last passes the bubble and settles into its cool hibernation.
There are many things--things which we are sure will one day gain that special status of "remember that one time when we lived at that one place and had that one dishwasher that was so noisy you couldn't hear yourself talk if you spoke into a stethoscope?--that was awesome!"--that try us. And while they may once be immortalized in ballad, presently they are irritating, and we hope to distract ourselves by laughing at them.
There are times--definitive moments--when you feel your life being inexorably drawn to a pivotal event. Helplessly, it compels you forward to meet yourself in an almalgamous, harmonic, metaphysical supernova.
Pithy had one of these moments in the Lin's produce section.
"Excuse me? Do you mind if I ask you a weird question...?"
At this point it was probably not rude of us to respond with, "Well, yeah I kinda do...not really in to that whole weird question thing..." After all, the woman posing the question was quite forward herself--but, like I said, "compelled forward..."
"Sure," Prudence responds, somewhat wary.
"I don't mean to pry...but,"--we have since learned that this in fact means they do want to pry. Don't ask us why she prefaced it this way. It would have been much more accurate to lead in with an honest "I mean to pry..." But we tell it like it is--or was, as the case may be. "I don't mean to pry...but, are you Pentecostal?"
(Later, when we examine this story at all possible angles, Tom will say the word was Mennonite, Prudie will reinforce Pentecostal, and Jerry--in form--struggles with Mentecostal as an actual, valid lifestyle.) Take stock of ourselves: What are we? Where are we from? What physical characteristics led to such an inquiry? The denim skirt? The collective long sleeves? Or was it something elusive--an aura--that left such an air of mystery that Creepywoman in Lin's produce section (we can call her this now) was compelled--in her own self discovery moment (that she has fluid boundaries and an inadequate knowledge of social etiquette)--to ask, "Are you Pentecostal?"
All this flashes in our mind's eye--well we kind of evenly distribute it between us: Prudie takes on the skirt, Tom thinks about the sleeves. The expectation builds in a crescendo of--well, expectancy, coming to a jarring halt at our contrite: "No, sorry."
That's it, "No, sorry." Our life defining moment was an apology--and we hadn't even done something wrong. Better luck next time I guess. As a note: the offending skirt earned us another encounter at Lin's produce section (what is it with avocados that misleads "Talk to us, we don't mind...spill your heart out...") this time concerning GAP, Maurices, and other such appropriate places of apparel for obtaining mysterious denim skirts.
Lesson learned: "not prying" + avocados = gawkamole
Let's start at the very beginning--that's a very good place to start.
Backing...left, left--no left!...pull forward. Backing...backing, pull forward. Rinse and repeat. At last, the ball and hitch come together in perfect alignment with the sun, moon, stars--each other, and we embark. At six thirty, the morning still smells cold. Prudence sits center, playing chicky buffer for Tom and Jerry. Roger Miller crowns us "King of the Road."
Orientation is in the Ballroom. Any hopes we have of an enchanting Cinderella ballroom are rudely grounded when we enter with our appropriate sticker colors and find the tables foaming over with incoming freshmen--not the good kind of foaming over, the kind that leaves you with a dirty glass and sticky between your fingers. Prudence is accosted by a "perky" group leader threatening group "getting to know you" games. She says no--not with her mouth, with her eyes--but Perky doesn't speak you'vegottobekiddingme eye language.
Lesson One: "Make connections! Make, Make Connections!" Tom does not realize the grave importance of this concept at first. However, after Orientation Leader explains that through these connections unfortunates from Metropolis Chicago will receive their first exposure to horses--his confusion dissipates. He will make connections--the horses must be exposed!
Upon realizing that they already knew that the difference between college and high school was that one is college and one is high school, Pithy opts to ditch the remaining itinerary. We can do this--we made connections.
Jerry has arranged a meeting with LandLady at our chateau. Arriving to a warm hello, we walk through the terms and expectations. Pretty sure we have the best deal in town. Like the grown ups we are, the rooms are chosen (or assigned as may be the case) through thoughtful consideration and compromise--"Let's think this through. I think you should have that room and I should have this room. Hmm...you want this room? Lets compromise--I'll have this room, you have that room. Glad we worked this out."
Granted, we didn't have any parted seas or half clad Egyptians chasing us; our Exodus did, however, leave us hot, tired, and prepared for the bright new possibility of fresh beginnings.
Pithy is a group of folk family singers…um, well one of us sings anyway; the other two carve delicate hearts out of Styrofoam and fry ants through magnifying glasses, respectively. We consist of two guys and a girl—this is necessary for you to know because said girl plans to invoke audience empathy and feels it necessary that the female demographic of our readership identify with her sex. *Insert Comment: (Girl) “She also holds all executive power—including rights of veto.”*
In truth, we are college students preparing for the day when we too don our cape and fashionable superhero suit to change the world. We are generally excited about life—statistics show that unmarried people going to college are the happiest they will ever be—don’t argue—it’s from a Lifespan Development book. This verity could paint a bleak future for those unluckies embarking on life’s marriage voyage (yea—we made a metaphor!), in fact it does—but, that is a problem for said unluckies and future Pithy.
We feel one of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it is very complex, it is very profound. Rather, like other twentysomething college students, we find profundity in those things relevant to ourselves (don’t hate us cuz we’re beautiful). We therefore pledge to present the simple events of our lives (apologizing beforehand for the TooMuchInformations and OverShares), and hope you see the relevance.
