Category: Ridiculous

At 6:30 this morning, my cell phone rang. It was too early for Tessa to be calling to tell me that I was late to meet her at the gym at 9:30, but I was so disoriented that I jumped out of bed and had my spandex in one hand already when I answered the phone.

Silence. Click.

I got back in bed, studying the number in my caller ID and fuming because by now, I was wide awake and I had jumped up so fast that my heart was racing as if I’d already run to the gym. Holding up the cell phone like a miniature Gameboy, I shuffled through the recent calls list and punched ‘Send’ with a passive-aggressive thumb.

“Hello?”

“Hi. If you call someone and wake them up at 6:30 in the morning, it would be nice if you at least said something before hanging up.”

“No…no…” I could tell the poor guy didn’t actually speak english.

“Well, fine. Good-bye.” My itch for revenge adequately satisfied, I dozed off, curled up with the phone in my hand. At 7:30, it rang again, same number on the caller ID. Because if you dial the wrong number, wait an hour and try again, it might be right this time. Only this time, I was prepared.

“Hola!” Confused the anonymous caller out of his mind. And then proceeded to scold him in his mother language. Don’t worry, I wasn’t too harsh. My spanish vocabulary isn’t very developed in the reprimanding department, so I told him that it was “not fair and not nice” to call someone ‘en la manana cuando no habla.’ He stuttered out an apology in english. I wanted to tell him that he might as well say ‘lo siento,’ since, by now, we were speaking the same language. Instead, I was reduced to, “Thank you. Have a nice day.”

I want this shirt. Even if it isn’t true, since I am in cookie recovery after a rough stint in cookie rehab, and even though Milk & Cookies have evolved into More [Graham] Crackers?, I want to run down a cookie trail lined with frosting through a meadow of cotton candy, holding hands with the ticklish doughboy with the tummy full of cookie crumbs and eating brownies.

I think the photo ID side of my OneCard is heavier than the magnetic strip side. This, after observing that, every time I toss it on the floor, it lands face down. I think leaving my card on the floor right at the doorway is a great way to remember to take it with me when I leave.

I lost my OneCard on Friday, the day after the crazy, random party in Safford, somewhere between my room and dinner in Prospect (pizza, I deserved it).

Considering my record, it is a wonder I didn’t drop the card in the dark the night before, back and forth between Safford and the ‘Delles, far beyond punch drunk. Hours before, on my way upstairs after a quiet, gourmet dinner at Melissa’s apartment, I was hijacked into a party where I ended up drinking a lot-dka vodka instead of catching up on homework. The truth is, I didn’t even have it with me at that point. I was relying on Ally to get me back inside!

My lost OneCard moments happen multiple times a day. It’s nothing knew if I have to retrace my steps, toss clothes around the room or dump the contents of every bag I own in a mad search. Naturally, people assumed that I’m scanning the sidewalk with my headlamp outside of Safford because I lost it during the escapades of the night before. They smile sympathetically, not because they’re in the pool betting on how many times I will have to look for it this week, but because I must have had a wild night (it’s a small dorm, everyone had a wild night.)

Luckily, Public Safety doesn’t ask questions unless you’re actually sauced when you show up to get a temporary card for the weekend. And I found my real OneCard on the closet floor about ten minutes after I got the temp, as if I had tossed it toward the laundry basket like a dirty sock. I had to wait until this morning to have it reactivated, and as soon as I got it back, I punched it. You’re not supposed to put holes in your card, but I have lost it for the last time.

As a recently declared Art History minor, it’s not really that alarming that I walked into the Art building for a class on Monday for the very first time since September 2002. It’s still unreasonably cold in there because they keep the AC so regulated to preserve the art work on display, and the chill immediately reminded me of the very first academic blunder of my college career. The night before classes started my first year, I diligently looked up the buildings and room numbers for all of my classes, including my first year seminar, Films in the Aura of Art.

The next day, I showed up in Dwight, wondered briefly at the enormous size of my first year seminar, and signed the attendance sheet, which was missing the last letters of the alphabet anyway, so I wasn’t surprised not to find my name. I took notes, complete with decorative sketches of film strips along the margins, until 2:30, when the lecture ended and we took a break before screening the first film. When that was finally over at 5PM, I stopped at the Odyssey to buy my new textbook and then headed back to my room to read.

It wasn’t until I looked for the page numbers on the syllabus that I realized I had just spent all afternoon and part of the evening in Film Studies 200. How immaculately orderly to schedule an intro Film Studies course and an intro Art History course about film on a simultaneous timetable, weekly two and half hour film screening and all. I had to e-mail my intended professor and explain my lengthy blonde moment, and then go return my textbook to the Odyssey.

It seems that it is protocol for me to embarrass myself at the beginning of every Mount Holyoke Art History course. I whined miserably to my mom on Monday night about the whole Architecture class chucking at me when I made a comment:

“The professor put up two drawings that some guy had done, one representing his town as it was, which was basically nothing but church steeples and a few piles of dirt, and one predicting the way it would look if it was industrialized, with walls and a real bridge and maybe a factory, and he asked us which one we would want to live in, and no one said anything so I raised my hand and said the one on the…oh no!”

“What?”

“No wonder they laughed, of course they laughed, I said I’d want to live in the one on the left, but since I don’t know my right from my left…oh man, I said I’d want to live in the one with the piles of dirt!”

Mom is amused. She has to hold the phone away from her mouth or her laughter will deafen me.

“And, wait! It gets worse! I followed up that remarkable statement with the insight that I chose the town on the left because it looked ‘stronger and more permanent!’ The half-a-picket-fence looked stronger to me than, you know, the brick wall with an actual foundation. So the class is laughing because they’re like, ‘Dude, you do whatever you want, but I’d totally go for the industrialized real estate.’”

“And you just realized this?”

“Yeah! I just held up my left hand so it looked like an ‘L’ which I restrained myself from doing in class so I wouldn’t look like an idiot.”

Holly and I have penned false public safety log entries every time we’ve been in grave danger this week. And better believe it, one of these strange police reports is also true.

November 29th – 2:33 PM
Student found dead in Mead Hall, trapped while trying to break in through a propped window, which collapsed. Autopsy revealed that OneCard was not in her posession.

December 1st – 11:52 PM
Officers received a report that a car drove over the Skinner Green and nearly struck a student. Officers have identified the owner of the vehicle. Case referred to the Dean’s Office.

December 6th – 4:59 PM
Student hit by car while crossing the street in an attempt to hand her paper in before the deadline. She leapt in front of a moving car when she realized that she had only one minute left. She lost her life and one letter grade. It was noted that her paper was not stapled in the upper left hand corner.

Quote of the day: “Now I’m here…I’ll drink to the madness that makes me this way.” – Kasey Chambers

Why wear a sweatshirt at a school where it is clearly more fashionable (and, apparently, newsworthy) to sport no clothing at all? Today’s New York Times features this charming article about my temporary alma mater. Excerpts…

November 3, 2004
In a Game of Shirts and Skins, They’d Be the Skins
By MAREK FUCHS

CLINTON, N.Y., Oct. 28 – At a rugby game at Middlebury College recently, cheerleaders had taken the field to urge on the home team with timeless perkiness when they were silenced by a drove of naked students running a parade line through the middle of the field. At Connecticut College, a tour of the campus was conducted in the typical formation, with the guide walking backward, pointing to everything from the library to the dean’s office. The only wrinkle was that those taking the tour, both men and women, were without a stitch of clothes…

At colleges across New England and upstate New York, a band of naked students from Hamilton College, who call themselves the school’s varsity streaking team (and consider themselves undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the nation, though it is not clear – or even probable – that there is any competition), has been spotted tiptoeing through college libraries stark naked, forefingers on noses, advising people to shush and running down campus hills in a Flying V formation, also naked, flapping their arms and making “caw” noises.

Proudly describing themselves as more narcissists than naturalists, the streakers, most of whom say they are on the fringes of campus life and washouts from youth athletic programs, are not authorized in any way by Hamilton College or the N.C.A.A., and they obviously do not have the more common trappings of team play, like uniforms. All they come equipped with is deadpan humor and sneakers.

Theater of the absurd, meet intercollegiate sports…

“We kept referring to ourselves as a team,” said Craig Moores, a senior studio arts major, “and then it dawned on us that if we were truly a team, we’d have to have away games…”

The team starts by arriving on campus and formulating a plan of attack while fully clothed, disguised as that school’s students.

At Colgate recently, they first figured that they would run through the main portion of campus, and two floors of the student center, before going into the woods to undress.

Mr. Holzaepfel gave the team a pregame talk, though it was a short and modest one. The team was fearful of being caught, not to mention somewhat chilly….

Off they went, imploring Colgate students to strip (none did), and then back to their cars, which, as bad luck would have it, were parked in a lot next to a building where Colgate’s president was holding a meeting.

“We’ve done a lot of bad planning historically,” said Lydia Kiesling, a senior comparative literature major. “That’s usually the X-factor.”

The team was hemmed into the parking lot by three campus security vehicles, backed by the Hamilton Village police.

Andy Glossner, a junior chemistry major, looked ashen. If this police matter delayed him, he would miss an exam in physical chemistry, he wailed.

“Physical chemistry?” repeated Ms. Kiesling. “As opposed to what, mental chemistry?”…

Then the Hamilton Village police charged everyone with disorderly conduct.

Quote of the day: “I belong to you, I belong to you, You’re the one who will never let me down, won’t let me down, I belong to you.” – Superchick