Halloween Hierarchy

Dear American Children,

I know that you are aware of what time of year it is. The leaves are changing and the fall wind is blowing the excitement of Halloween through your hair. You dream of hopping into the costume that your mom made after a few boxes of wine last Friday night and instantly being transported into a world of magic and glee. Well I advise you, young ones, to hold onto that feeling as long as  you possibly can because as soon as you reach adolescence, the joy of Halloween is quickly made into a fortress of social scrutiny. Basically what I’m saying is that those fun little Halloween Express commercials are absolutely lying to you. The girl in the scary (with a dash of gothic sexiness) witch costume isn’t cool. She also isn’t happy. Do you know why? Because the guy dressed up as a hunky version of Bob The Builder isn’t buying her a “Jack O’ Lantern,” he’s buying it for the slutty cat. Yeah, that cat is going to find out if he can really “fix it” while witch girl is sitting on the sidelines next to the girl that was gutsy enough to actually dress up as a baked potato. All I’m saying is if you’re going to rebel against anything in those angsty teen years, I would pick the Disney Channel. Its a cruel world out there, filled with evil stares and whispers. Nothing like Halloweentown. Good luck. Be brave and whatever you do, show some cleavage. 

May the Force Be With You,

Katherine

                                  

I have always been a firm believer in the non-slutty Halloween costume. I mean the way I look at it, any girl can slap on some garters and platforms and call themselves a “Bumble Bee” but I am an original. My creativity can’t be squandered by the typical desire to well, for lack of a better word, be desired. Frankly, I think that your costume says a lot about you as a person. This thought became even more evident this weekend as I hit the town to soak up the festivities. I was dressed head to toe as a sheep and was feeling pretty fly until I realized my cotton ball-covered homemade gem was less than well received. It was clear that every costume fit into its own little “clique.” It was exactly like the lunch room dynamic in the movie Mean Girls, you had your group and if you veered from it the structure of the social norm would be completely shifted, causing an animal-like uproar. The groups were assembled as such:

The Slutty Occupation Costume- Everyone knows these girls. The ones that buy those Legs Avenue brand cop, nurse, or construction worker costumes. It really doesn’t matter how many times you tell your friends that that costume is so “unoriginal” you still secretly wish you were them. You wish they’d invite you to sit with them at lunch, but you know what, Girl That Dressed Up Like Frodo, they never will. They will just continue to mean mug you from behind their Solo Cup of Andre champagne and use their syringe to squirt your boyfriend’s R&R whiskey into his mouth. Their occupation of choice may be blue collar, but the truth is they run this town. 

The Popstars- The slightly less popular but still highly respected Popstar costume has been done for many generations, but this year as I sat in the corner observing them in their natural habitat, I had a revelation. Our “pop” culture is super weird. Think about it: 10 years ago girls were putting pigtails in their hair, slipping into middrift sweaters and calling themselves Britney Spears. While slightly irritating, it wasn’t very peculiar. Now it’s all brightly colored wigs and stilettos in the shape of inanimate objects. None the less, the Rhianna, Katy Perry, and Ke$ha of the party seemed to be quite a hit with the frat boys who, not surprisingly, were almost all dress as Edward Cullen in a desperate attempt to woo the ladies. And yes, Ke$ha brushed her teeth with a bottle of Jack nearly 6 times on demand.

The Regular Animal Costume- This is where my dog costume-clad roommate and I fit in. We were shunned to sit at the poorly assembled card table with the other confused animals for the duration of the night. I felt exactly like Lindsay Lohan’s character on her first day of school, except instead of being greeted by Janice Ian and Damian, I was welcomed to the table by a pair of “cats.” It was pretty apparent that these girls had missed the stripper memo as well. I wouldn’t put us in the band geek category but let’s just say, we definitely were going to be spending our prom making a “stand against the man” at a local coffee shop. 

The Foreign Exchange Students Dressed as Babies (see picture)- This is definitely the bottom tier of the social scale. Though my category doesn’t provide me much street cred, I still wouldn’t launch myself this far into social suicide. I don’t know if I would even let them sit at my lunch table. I honestly didn’t even know a costume so horrifying could exist until I had to experience it first hand. I was just sitting there shedding cotton balls and minding my own business when up behind me popped Angel and Raphael the bouncing, blubbering and slightly terrifying Spanish exchange students. They were completely naked except for a strategically placed diaper and a pacifier hanging out of their mouths. They loved my handy work on the sheep outfit and insisted I take a picture with them and load it to “Ze Facebook.” As I posed, I looked on to see the popular girls whisper and point as my last hope at being cool trickled away. 

Though I did eventually swallow my pride and load our picture to Ze Facebook, I took a valuable lesson away from this Halloween experience. You should never throw away your morality and dignity for a chance at popularity. Being yourself is the best you can offer anyone and that should always be enough. Except for on Halloween that is, so slap on your skankiest green dress and call yourself Kermit the Frog or no one is going to buy you a drink, sweetheart. 

A Very Davis Vacation

Everyone knows the feeling.  You’re sitting around the dinner table with your family when all of a sudden, your mother drops the bomb on you.  “Hey kids!  Don’t plan anything over that one weekend, because we’re going on a family vacation!”  In other words, “Hey kids!  Instead of getting to go to your friend’s lake house for the weekend, you will all be piled into the ole suburban like sardines and forced to entertain yourselves for 15+ hours with minimum food and water.  It’s going to be fun and you will go and you will like it, dammit.”  At that point in time, nothing could possibly sound worse than going on a road trip with your family.  I know this because that was usually my first thought after hearing such news, but I could never tell this to my parents for fear of hurting their feelings. 

 The Davis family thrived on taking the most outrageous family vacations this side of the Mississippi.  And when I say outrageous, I don’t mean that in a cool, flashy, Vegas-style vacation way.  I mean that in more of a Clark Griswold family vacation type of way.  My first experience on a Davis family road trip goes all the way back to my toddler days when my father received the luxury of flying to the beach while the rest of us piled into the station wagon.  My mom, being the overly paranoid woman that she is, decided to rent a mannequin from a costume store and dress him in my fathers clothes, letting him ride shot-gun all the way to South Carolina in order to trick strangers at truck stops into thinking she wasn’t traveling alone.  But here’s the kicker.  We were even instructed to address the mannequin as “Dad” to make it seem more realistic.  That’s normal, right?

This was only the first of many bizarre roadtrips for the Davis family.   After countless, tiring hours of “she wont stop looking at me” spent between me and my sister, and constant death threats from my parents, I have to admit that I’ve seen some things that I know I’ll never forget.  Worlds biggest ball of twine?  Seen it. Deepest hand-dug well?  Been there.  Largest functional steam shovel?  Oh you mean Big Brutus?  Don’t fret, I’ve seen it all.  Now I realize that you’re probably thinking that I’m crazy and I have absolutely no perspective on what the world is really like because I’ve never backpacked through the Swiss Alps or deep sea dived in the Caribbean.  But I say quite the contrary, because I’ve seen things that most people will never get the privilege of seeing.  No one really cares about that trip you took to Europe in 3^rd grade, and I can guarantee that you’ve never seen anything as cool as the worlds highest jumping mule.  So next time your parents are thinking about dragging you along on some lame road trip, don’t immediately dismiss the idea, because you never know what awesomely weird stories can come from it.

-Faith

A Water Filled Hell

m going to go ahead and make a statement that I am instantly going to regret making on the internet. I am very easily bullied into things. That being said, I am even more easily persuaded into doing things by my mother. Unfortunately, this instance perfectly demonstrates this issue. I had just walked in our house from a grueling summer away from home filled to the brim of self deprecating poolside jokes as the more physically gifted individuals walked by and a lot of alcohol induced pork nachos that I don’t regret at all. I had thrown my bag on the couch and was about to fire up an episode of The Real Housewives of Some Big City Nobody Cares About, when my mother erupted from the kitchen. She was wearing a flowered swim cap, a wetsuit and uttered the words that would become some of the most terrifying worlds I would ever hear…“I’ve signed us up for water aerobic classes.”

      

Okay, part of that was a lie. She was wearing her normal Chico’s outfit but the wetsuit would have been a lot funnier. Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking. “Water aerobics is easy. You’re young, Katherine. You’re in your prime. Everyone there is going to be like 80-years-olds. You can do this!” Well thank you guys for that. But unfortunately you are only half right. Yes, everyone is over the age of 75 but they are also a lot more physically fit than I am. Honestly, at first I was feeling pretty cocky when I shoved my body into that Speedo one piece, grabbed that noodle and plunged right into that uncomfortably lukewarm pool. The instructor came out and my cockiness only escalated. Her name was Evelyn and she looked very sweet. I kind of wanted to cuddle up with her and watch Designing Women, maybe talk about my feelings. But Evelyn was not sweet at all. She was what has once been called, a bad bitch. Homegirl was not even a little afraid to get her Reeboks wet and she kicked my ass up and down that YWCA swimming pool. Alarmingly, it wasn’t just Evelyn. It was every senior citizen in the tri-state area and even more alarmingly, my mother was their leader. It was like a water filled concentration camp but instead of a dry wasteland, it was a pain filled body of water set to the beat of “Build Me Up Buttercup.” I didn’t stand a chance. As I slowly drowned during “the rocking horse” I was forced to watch my mother giggle and laugh with her new friends as she showed them better techniques with their “water jog.” I was an outsider. It was like gym class all over again, except this time I couldn’t con my teacher into letting me sit on the stage and gossip with him while everyone else ran laps.

Finally, after an hour of horror it was over. I was out of breath. I was discouraged. I was probably bleeding somewhere. I got out of the death trap, took my pride and I ran to the locker room. I didn’t just run, I sprinted. You would have thought there was a Neiman Marcus semiannual sale in that locker room. I rolled into a little ball and prayed my mom wouldn’t find me. But of course after she got done speaking to her aquatic minions, she waltzed into the locker room like she was Michael Phelps or something. I wanted to push her off her hypothetical throne. I wanted her to feel the pain that I felt. I was thinking of the most hurtful thing I could say. I was ready. But as our eyes met, she beat me to the punch. “Sweetie maybe this just is a bit hard for you.” I guess she was right. Whatever, girlfriend. You may be good at high speed kicking across a lap pool but I challenge you to go against me at Toddlers and Tiaras trivia. I am sure you’re wondering if there is a moral to this story. If I am actually going anywhere with this. Well the answer is I’m not. I’m not actually going anywhere with this at all. I just wanted to tell this story so maybe my one chubby, unathletic, red-headed reader can go to bed tonight knowing she isn’t alone.

With that, I say hats off to you Mabel, Trudy, Evelyn, and Pearl. You ladies are more woman than I’ll ever be.

-Katherine

Things That I Will Never Understand

            

I wouldn’t consider myself to be an extraordinarily bright person, but I also wouldn’t consider myself a complete idiot.  I’ve had my IQ tested, and I’ll just tell you that I am of pretty average intelligence.  I know what you’re thinking.  But what about that time you got honorable mention in the science fair for your experiment entitled “Hotdogs: The Silent Killer”?  Ok guys, I’m not here to brag about past accomplishments.  I’m here because there are some things in this world that even I will never understand.

People who enjoy running.  I thought running was supposed to be a punishment for when you mess up in another sport, but I recently found out that some people actually run for fun.  And this whole ‘runner’s high’ lie that people talk about? You’ve got to be kidding me.  The only runner’s high I experience happens after I’ve been walking on the treadmill for about 10 minutes and I suddenly remember that I have another Totino’s pizza in the freezer that I will most definitely be eating as soon as I return from the gym.

Math.  Nothing in this world will ever be more confusing to me than basic algebra. As I have previously mentioned, I wasn’t blessed with the best memory in the world, so remembering the formula for the cubed square root of a cumulonimbus doesn’t come easy for me.  Also, I’m about 50% sure that I don’t know what a cumulonimbus is either.

Grown men who play video games.  I’m not going to say that I don’t still enjoy an occasional game of Mario Kart, but I just don’t understand why it is socially acceptable for fully-grown men to play video games. Take the game Call Of Duty, for example.  I know the drill.  Fire up the ole Xbox, throw on the expensive geek headset, and start shooting other cartoon people.  I’ve seen my brother and friends sit on their couch and play this game literally ALL DAY.  Maybe it’s a weird macho thing that I will just never understand, but I’m sorry, if you are over 15 years old, there is just no excuse.

The Bachelor.  Living in a sorority house, I received a lot of grief for not getting into ‘The Bachelor’ like all my sisters were.  So one day, as I heard my friends talking about where they were watching the show that night, I had a thought.  Maybe I was being too harsh on the show and all of its loyal followers.  Maybe the show really wasn’t as lame and completely boring as I had assumed.  So I sat down and forced myself to watch an entire episode.  What I learned from this was that ‘The Bachelor’ was not only as stupid as I thought, it was worse.  I’ll stop here for fear that my die-hard roommates might try to set fire to my belongings after reading this.

Meatloaf.  A bunch of weird meats all mushed together in the form of a loaf, smothered in ketchup.  Nothing makes less sense than meatloaf.

Lifted trucks.  I mean, I get it.  If you drive a lifted truck, it obviously means that you are packing it down below, and you want to make sure that everyone knows that. Right?  It doesn’t matter that it looks silly and is incredibly inconvenient to get into and I can only assume that you have trouble with drive-thrus and parking garages. Doesn’t matter.  People need to know.  There’s also a pretty good chance that you’re the same guy that thinks it’s cool to cruise around with the bass so loud that your arm hairs literally fall off.  You’re not cool, you’re just a douche.

Airplanes.  It’s been explained to me so many times that I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I still don’t understand.  I mean, it makes some sense when teachers explain the physics of it during class, but don’t try and tell me that you’ve never been in an airplane thousands of miles in the sky and thought to yourself, “HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?!”  It just really blows my mind, and it kind of scares me, because if airplanes can exist, who’s to say that it isn’t possible for robot airplanes to take over the world one day?

Great guys who date awful girls.  He’s funny, he’s smart, he listens to good music and he loves his family.  He’s the ideal guy, except for one tiny little detail.  The girl he has been dating for the past year is the worst human being on the face of the planet.  Sure, she looks like she could easily be Megan Fox’s body double, but the girl has no soul.  Not to mention, the term ‘stank face’ was coined for her.  It’s been happening for decades past (word on the street is that ole Ben Franklin’s girlfriend was a real bitch) and I’m very sure that it is a mystery that won’t be solved anytime soon.

Craisins.  Half cranberry.  Half raisin.  What?!  I can partially comprehend how mixed race babies and labradoodles are created, but craisins are on a whole different level of confusing.  Sometimes I just like to imagine that some skanky cranberry named Janelle decide to sleep with some sketchy raisin named Pedro that she met at the club, and then nine months later, the world had craisins.  Yeah, that seems like the most likely explanation.

-Faith

Community College Girl Problems

As many people know, I am That Girl. You know the girl I’m talking about. The girl you creep on Facebook and turn to your friend and have a conversation similar to this:

You: “This is [insert name.] She went to [insert major university] but she just couldn’t handle it.”

Friend (I like to think of your friend as someone who is wearing a Hello Kitty crop top, pink skinny jeans and glitter eyeshadow. That’s the most irritating outfit I can think of.): “Oh my gosh. I knew a girl like that. She went to [major university] but I heard she just started eating Chapstick uncontrollably. Like, it was so weird. I met her roommate at a party once and she told me all about it. Like, she just wouldn’t stop eating Chapstick and now she is in a mental asylum. So sad. You know? She was so normal in high school.”

You: “Yeah thats pretty much completely what happened to this girl. But, instead of eating Chapstick, she just watched a lot of movies on her laptop and instead of an insane asylum…she’s at…oh my god I can’t say it…it’s just so sad…a…a…a community college.”

You and your Hello Kitty-tastic Friend Simultaneously: “So sad.”

I know this because I have had this conversation. No really, I have. Recently actually, because I’m a huge hypocrite. The only thing is that I love being “That Girl.” I feel like it makes me really edgy. Later in life, I’ll finally be able to give inspirational speeches to uppity private high schools about the great hole my life fell into and how I so valiantly brought myself to higher ground. A lot like the guy who fell in the canyon and had to eat his arm off to survive. The only thing is that I’m really bad at being edgy at my community college and these are the reasons why:

1. No one really wants to be my friend. My roommate says it’s because no one likes the question “So what are you in for?” But I really don’t think that’s it. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that no one wants to look at pictures on my iPhone of my dog doing various daily activities. I don’t understand why that is but apparently it’s not everyone’s personal preference. 

2. I refuse to park anywhere but the faculty lot. I mean this isn’t new. I did this at my previous institution of higher learning also but they don’t tow at community college. This has it’s pros and cons. Pro: my car doesn’t get to take a weekly ride on the big, flat truck. Con: I don’t get to have those fun “you’ve got to be kidding me, Katherine. Again?” conversations with the towing company. It used to just be an issue of laziness but since the parking spots at community college are pretty much all the same distance from the building, it’s now an issue of pretentiousness. And I am fine with that. 

3. I wont stop calling myself “The Carrie Bradshaw of Community College.” I have always identified with Carrie. I think we have a lot in common. She’s from the fabulous city of New York. I am from Oklahoma. It would be pointless to tell you what town because just by saying “Oklahoma” you are already uninterested. Carrie is constantly dripping in the most well known designers. I wear a lot of Nike shorts and Forever 21. She sips Cosmopolitans in the city’s most trendy locations. I try like hell to find any possible bar with beer pitchers under five dollars. Basically, we are the same person. I also don’t think it’s out of the boundaries of social norms to give yourself a title and introduce yourself as such:

“Hello. I, see you are also riding this elevator. You may have heard of me, I am the Carrie Bradshaw of Community College.”  Then flip your hair. 

4. I don’t smoke cigarettes…but I pretend. I have asthma. I have “inhaler after walking up a flight of stairs” asthma. I couldn’t smoke even if I wanted to. But since I’m really edgy now, I sit in my car with a burning cig until I smell so bad that you’d have to believe I’m authentic. I even say cool things like “Can I bum a Marlboro Heavy?” Even if that may or may not be a real thing.

I may suck at being edgy, but no one will know that in twenty years when I write my memoir about these trying times. They’ll just see me as a survivor, not an easily distracted former Catholic school girl who got bad grades. 

Katherine