This delightful, delicious, de-lovely month of April for the year 2002 begins at the bottom of the page, so make your way down there for all of the sapid details.
April 22nd, 2002: Today, whilst I was taking my first econ midterm of the quarter, I was reminded of a foreign exchange student that came to my high school in my freshman year. I don't remember his name, and I'm only half-sure that he was from Yugoslavia, but one thing about him sticks out very clearly in my mind--he used to wear U.S.A. socks. Socks that were red, white, and blue and had the word U.S.A. printed on them. And he used to wear them every day. With jeans, with khakis, with gym shorts and running pants. I never talked to him, so I never asked him why he wore those socks, but I think we all knew. Tracey and I used to joke about the fact that he was trying to fit in with Americans by wearing something that no respectable American wears. I thought it rather sad that he was trying to be someone he wasn't by wearing something that he normally wouldn't. And then I remembered that I add the letter u to words like color and favorite to appear British. And then I shot myself in the head.
April 1st, 2002: I've decided that I must be the dumbest girl alive. Actually, I decided that a long time ago, but I don't think I've ever publicly professed it. I'm sure that you could name a thousand instances of my behaving like a dumb girl, but I'd like to tell you that it's okay for you to feel that way about me, because I feel that way about myself. Let me give you another reason to believe it's true as I tell you about my day:
Today was the first day of classes of Spring Quarter here at good, ol' OSU. I woke up three hours before my first class just so I could get myself situated after moving back into my dorm yesterday. I hadn't seen my roommate at all last night, so I was looking forward to hearing about her Spring Break and telling her about mine, but the first thing she did when she woke up was to go to her computer and begin beating it profusely and swearing at it when it wouldn't work. We had a little conversation in which she said to her little Dell, "WORK, damn you!" I muttered, "Wow," and she replied, "I'm just giving it a little tough love." I was amused at first, but we then spent the next hour and a half bothering Jarred the Computer Guy, calling Dell's Technical Support, and prying at various parts of Elaine's computer with a dirtied knife and a random chopstick that happened to be laying on our floor. The Dell Tech Support lady kept telling Elaine to simply remove the cover of her computer, but this task took four people to accomplish and had Elaine crying, "What do you want me to do?! I'm a college student! I need a computer!" at several points. And when I say crying, I mean crying. Literally. It was quite an affair.
At 11:30, I arrived at my first class of the day, history, where I met the lovely BIG K.N. The class lasted all of five minutes. Literally. We just looked over the syllabus and headed over to Javamaster, where we made our own rules like the badasses we are by combining the strawberry-raspberry-banana smoothie and the strawberry-peach-banana smoothie to create a strawberry-raspberry-peach smoothie, claiming that we're anti-banana. After running into a girl from my work who was searching for her lost, non-English-speaking husband, we walked back to the journalism building to enjoy our treats on a bench in the sun, where we ran into Leirbag, a friend from high school who used to call me Eitak, Uma, one of The BIG K.N.'s suitemates, and the Steese Factor, who happened to be heading to economics, the very same class I was inching toward. So, Steese and I did the econ thing, which was a barrel of laughs. The whole first half of the class was a giant advertisement for economists, the economics major, the Undergraduate Student Government, and the Undergraduate Economics Society. Our professor showed us statistics about starting salaries for folks with economics degrees. He showed us photos of Alan Greenspan and told us that Greenspan was handed a Ph.D. in 1970 for some economics-related papers that he wrote. He showed us photos of Ed Ray, provost of OSU, and said that because Ray has an economics degree, he's probably going to be the interim president of OSU, as our current president is preparing to leave. He showed us photos of Eddie Pauline, the current Undergraduate Student Government president who's also running for president next year, and told us that both Pauline and his running mate really "took off" at OSU after taking economics classes. He then showed us a photo of next year's Undergraduate Economics Society, told us their names, and asked, "Aren't they a good-looking bunch?" It was ridiculous. And ridiculously funny.
From there, I went to turn in some film at State Discount, hoping to see "my guy". I'm afraid that I'm going to have to interrupt my day to tell you about this guy, because well, he consumes my AOL Instant Messenger away messages and profiles. The first time I met him, he was sorting stuff and throwing it into a bag as I was filling out my film-processing envelope, and as he sorted, he sang a song that went a little like, "Sorting stuff and throwing it into a ba-a-a-a-a-ag. Uhhhhh . . . huh!" And when he was finished, he said, "Did you like my 'sorting stuff' song?" And I replied, "Yeah, I did." With an accent on the yeah. I think we really made a connection; he told me he would see me the next Monday. Some of you may say that he was just telling me when to pick up my film, but I think he was propositioning me for sex. And when I got that film back, they hadn't used matte printing like I had asked them to. I didn't really care too much; it's not like I wanted them to reprint the pictures or anything, but knowing that he would be working, I called State Discount to pretend to complain. He was so kind, apologising and offering to reprint for free. Yeah, he's all about me.
But alas, my guy wasn't working, so I left to spend some time on OSU's famous park-like Oval. As I was leaving, I ran into a friend of Tracey's whom The BIG K.N. and called Plastic Chris because he appears to be made of some sort of waxy plastic material. (He's not, in case you were wondering.) I remarked over the fact that the first day of classes really brings everyone out of hiding as I walked around the Hopkins Hall art gallery for a bit and then headed toward the Science and Engineering Library to write this. As I passed Denney Hall, out came this . . . thing . . . in the shape of a girl . . . who used to work with me, and though we despise each other, I said her name and smiled like I meant it. And she waved . . . sort of . . . but when I stopped and asked her how she was, she walked right past me without a word. Ouch. And it affected me, for some reason. And then, as I was waiting for a computer at the library to waste some more time, I reached into my coat pocket and was stung by a random bee that happened to be lurking inside. I'd never been stung by a bee in my life. Not even as a child. And let me tell you, I know now why people cry when faced with the bee sting. But I held it in until a computer freed up and this girl swooped in from across the room and stole it right out from under me. I marched over to her in my horribly emotional state and calmly asked that she remove herself from my seat. She said, "Oh, sure. No problem. It's all good," and moved off to the side to wait. And then I cried. Not a sob where anyone could hear me but just a few tears rolling down my cheeks. I acted as if my eyes were just watering, because I felt ridiculous crying amongst the chemistry books and card catalogues. Maybe my eyes were just watering.
Yeah, that's it.