The Eighth Page

Senior Citizen

One day, when Senior Tennis didn’t meet due to the general apathy of everyone involved, Amy O’Gorman ’04 called me with an interesting proposition. I’m not used to being propositioned by nice, church-going sweethearts like Amy, so I listened and I listened good. It was Monday afternoon, and Amy didn’t have class until 8pm Thursday evening in Billy Murray’s basement. Her proposition, thus, was as follows: we take a road trip into the deep South and, disguised as truckers, visit waffle houses and hail-Jesus churches and super waffle churches (ooooh…mmmm). Also, we get academic credit for this road trip by submitting an application for an IP using x’s for all of the required signatures and hoping that the Office of IP’s continues playing with the cute little jellybean gumball machine instead of actually reading applications before approving them. I consulted my schedule. It read: “Tuesday—wake up and have leisurely breakfast. Arrive late to class and DON’T TAKE OFF SUNGLASSES!! YOU RUINED YOUR COOL LAST TIME, WOMAN!! (ugh, don’t you hate it when your mom sneaks into your room and writes notes on your personal daily schedule and uses disrespectful terms such as “woman”?), croquet at 2 (?), count on Senior Tennis being cancelled and sit on couch considering the architecture of “greater than” sign. Wednesday— From there it was pretty much free until African Drumming, my only real commitment (gives double cuts,) on Thursday night, coincidentally also at 8pm (!). So I was like, ok, Ames, lets do this adventure straight up g-style. We had to go out and find some trucker hats because both of us are too cool for mass trends like trucker hats and then we got in the truck that we obtained magically. Ok not magically but that is a whole ‘nother story. Amy said, “Alas, put on some Southern jams, sugar.” So I pumped up the Luda and Hot Boyz. She considered me disapprovingly. Ok, bad call; we listened to 15 straight hours of excruciating country twang. In hour 13, this Mercedes full of teamsters pulled up alongside us. We adjusted our bonnets, trucker hats abandoned long ago, figuring that these teamsters obviously thought we were the bomb diggity and such. No sir! In the Dirrrrty South, it’s all about the drag race. They challenged us, figuring that the weight of all the stuff we were trucking would slow us down. But we weren’t trucking any stuff, suckas! We easily won the race and they cried and then took out knives (uuhhhh…eep!). Then we said we knew Bobby Edwards, Mercedes illnasty Trickdaddy, and they released us from their threatening glances and flashes of knives. Actually, I made the part about the knives up. Everything else is true, but the knives are lies I used to get attention. Sorry. I took a little nap and when I woke up, Amy said, “Look! It’s Britney Spears’ house!” But I missed it. I cried for a good two hours but Amy wouldn’t go back just to let me see the stupid house. Stupid Amy keeping beautiful memories all to herself. You just KNOW that when I put “Ames—Road trips 4 eva! I heart u, gurl!” on my profile she’ll go and put “Road trips to B. Spears’ hood…holllllaaa!” on hers just to rub it in. I took another nap in a fit of rage and woke up when I sensed we were there and I was right. We’re here! Yessss. But wait, where are the waffle churches? Oh, those don’t exist? Awesome, let’s peace. Wait, let’s eat some fried chicken first. Mmmmmm, yeah. Ok, now we can leave. That was my stream of consciousness for approximately a four hour period. We got home just in time for our respective commitments and we both had great tans. That’s what is cool about Senior spring. Seemingly pointless road trips that make you feel like a movie star, reaffirm your love of New England, and get you all pretty and brown. Also, it’s cool to wear fur from your hunting excursions and say, “Oh this? This is just fur from my recent hunting expedition in Alaska. Just me and a few friends on Friday afternoons, very exclusive, very hush-hush, sort a time to get away from it all and think about the wilderness and kill some animals. I like to see myself as a sort of religious figure to those poor animals, a sort of pop-culture apocalypse if you will.” But it’s time for badminton, so I guess that’s a whole ‘nother story.