This delightful, delicious, de-lovely month of October for the year 2002 begins at the bottom of the page, so make your way down there
for all of the sapid details.
October 31st, 2002: I spent tonight in Chicago, Illinois, with A Boy Named Andy™, A Boy Named Andy™'s pal Bekah the Adorable™, and my pal Chicago Mike™. A Halloween with three cool kids and my favourite band, Jump, Little Children. Oh, yeah; and did I mention that it was in Chicago? "Badness", one might say. Look for a review shortly.
October 10th, 2002: I celebrated my 21st birthday yesterday with my two best friends in the entire world—Tracey and The BIG K.N. I had no plans to do anything as ridiculously socially expected as getting trashed, so we headed for Chi-Chi’s in the tradition birthday manner. Katie drove, while Tracey displayed her brand-new conducting baton and her superb music-major-like conducting skills. We shared stories of Tracey’s boyfriend, Katie’s boyfriend, and my headcold.
After Tracey and I gave Katie some bad directions to the restaurant and Katie pulled the most amazing U-turn feat ever, we found ourselves on a bench inside Chi-Chi’s, listening to bad mariachi music and reciting horrid Chi-Chi’s slogans like, “Nacho ordinary take-out.” Get it? Nacho. Yeah, I know.
The hostess told us that Will would be our server, so I greeted him by name and heavily freaked him out as he handed us our menus. He asked if we were in the mood for margaritas, told us that we don’t look 21, and said that he’d give us the benefit of the doubt anyway. A charmer, that Will. Katie and Tracey started in with, “Well, actually . . . ,” but I ordered a water just to spite society.
Through the meal, Katie talked about her job, Tracey complained about her class schedule, and I made fun of Jennifer Lopez songs sung in Spanish. Will called us “ladies” an annoying number of times but made up for it by referring to me as “the birthday girl” and asking if I wanted a song and dance number when he brought out my dessert. I turned him down when he informed that the restaurant was out of birthday sombreros, but I appreciated the offer.
The meal ended with a discussion on secular trend and our feelings about abortion over fried ice cream. Only with Tracey and Katie does abortion-talk on one’s birthday make sense. And only with Tracey and Katie can it be a discussion rather than an argument. We took a group restroom break, being careful not to allow urine spores access to our carry-out boxes, grabbed handfuls of free matchbooks like the poor college students we are, and piled back in Katie’s truck.
Katie mentioned needing some mirror-hangers, and there happened to be a Home Depot across the street, so we drove over to romp amongst the light fixtures and raw lumber. After Katie nearly crushed a woman on her bumper and received the dirtiest look imaginable, we assigned a word in the name of the store or each of us in order of hair length. So as the shortest-haired member of the trio, my job was to shout “The!” at the appropriate time, Katie was “Home!”, and Tracey was, of course, “DEPOT!” Yep, we’re geeks. But we’re proud geeks. We continued our game until we entered the store and found ourselves smack-dab behind the woman we almost ran over earlier. That hushed us until we found a couple of middle-aged male employees who really wanted to help us find the mirrors. After exploring sample kitchens, we bought various hanging devices and matching “KEEP OFF THE GRASS” signs and got back into Katie’s truck.
Katie and I spent a little time in Tracey’s apartment afterward, trying out the timer on her camera and pretending to grab each other’s boobs. What is it with Katies and boobs? Very odd thing.
When Katie dropped me off at my house after showing me around her new apartment for an hour or so, Bethany was relaxing on our couch. We sat discussing our wild night of birthday fun (as it was her birthday, too) until I looked out of the living room window and said, “I think our dumpster’s on fire.” And it was.
We sat on our porch and watched as a fire truck pulled into our alley and unloaded a tiny stream of water that extinguished the flames with a total lack of gusto in a matter of seconds. The crowd dispersed soon after, and Bethany waved to our neighbour as he sauntered back to his house across the street. He came over to share in our dumpster fire-induced excitement and introduced himself as Chris before calling over his roommate Vinnie to meet us. I actually met Vinnie last year and had seen him once since then but didn’t recognise him until he said, “Hey, I know you!” We told them that it was our birthday and spent twenty minutes arguing about why it was okay that we didn’t drink on the day when everyone told us that we must. Vinnie began giving us a lecture on the existence of Bigfoot to avoid the heartache of hearing about girls who don’t like to get drunk. And then we left him to go to bed.
It was a nice birthday. Not full of lavish gifts and parties and drinking but full of the people and places that I love. And dumpster fires. YES! I turned 21, got to see two of my best friends, gained enough Cinco Sampler leftovers to last me a week, proved my dorkiness to Home Depot, fondled boobies, and bonded with my neighbours over the smoldering ashes of a dumpster fire. Could life be better? I mean, really.
October 1st, 2002: You know, I always used to think that my face was pretty enough that I could choose to go bald without any problem whatsoever. I thought that people would rub my bald head and coo how I was the epitome of womanhood, even without my lovely coiled locks. This, of course, was a foolish daydream. Because today, I was bored in my 20th Century American Literature class and started thinking about how highly entertaining cutting my own hair during English class would be. I scrunched my eyes closed very tightly and wished for a pair of scissors, but when none appeared, I left the classroom armed with a new life's purpose. With my regular $42-per-haircut stylist booked solidly until the middle of next week, I found the next best thing in an $11-per-haircut SuperCuts right in the heart of campus. I told the Terra, a woman who called her own hair a wolf's mane, that I wanted her to cut enough off so that I, and only I, would notice a difference in the length. Terra apparently heard something more along the lines of shave me bald, sweet thing. So she did. Well, kind of. I mean, she left me with an inch or two of hair all around, but seriously, I might as well be bald. When I look in the mirror, all I see is my baby nose and my bare ears and my naked neckline fringed with the tiniest mass of pixie curls. It's a depressing thing, really. And I've decided officially that I will never, ever choose to go bald.