I recently had a request for some Tales from the Trenches: the College Years, so I thought I would take that as a cue and recount one of my more infamous stories. (Yes, I do take requests!)
As has been mentioned in some earlier posts, I was in a sorority in college. That only meant you had more access or opportunities to meet boys; it doesn’t guarantee that you actually did. And as I also mention in an earlier posting, I was classified as being not that cute by some other girls in the sorority. Let’s just say that didn’t give me a whole lot of self confidence when it came to talking to boys in college.
Now, I never want to give you the impression that being in the sorority was an entirely bad thing, because it wasn’t. One of the perks of having a hundred “sisters” was that at these parties/events, it meant you had a whole mess of other girls to try and help set you up with or talk to guys, which happened to be the case when I met C.
I saw him at a party (sorry, I refuse to call them “mixers” like other schools do because at my school that word was reserved for the splash of soda/juice that went into our drinks) and told one of my sisters (we didn’t use that word either, but I’ll use it now) that I thought he was cute. We had an upcoming event called “Screw Your Sister” where girls in the house were supposed to set each other up with their dates. The “screw” kind of gives the wrong impression as you were really supposed to set the girl up with someone she thought was cute. Or maybe it's because you hoped if you were set up with a cute guy that the "screw" would come after the event? Huh, maybe that was it -- show's you how naive I was in college. Anyway, C agreed to go with me but then realized he would be out of town that weekend. Then as it would happen….no one bothered to then set me up with someone else in C’s place. I remember sitting in the house’s study the night of the event as everyone else got ready to leave thinking I actually did end up getting screwed after all.
C felt bad about not being able to go to the event, so I asked him to go to my sorority's formal a few weeks later. I mean he said yes once so, I thought there would be a good shot that he would say yes again. I am a real risk-taker that way.
We had an ok time at formal – I mean you get to put on a fancy dress and drink, so really how bad is it going to be?
So we continued to hang out with each other somewhat regularly after the formal. But it was really….well, boring. I mean it was also college, so of course eventually every evening/activity came around to going out, drinking and hooking up. But talking to him was borderline painful. I kept waiting for him to come out of his shell. I didn’t realize that that’s just who he was, yhere was no shell to come out of. Yet I KEPT hanging out with him. Eventually someone asked me why (as well they should) and I told them it was like this - if you hadn’t eaten in a really long time, and someone came up and handed you a cracker, you aren’t really in a position to bitch that it's a stale saltine and you were really in the mood for a triscuit or a wheat thin. Or one of those fancy snooty water crackers. You take the damn saltine and are just happy anyone offered you a cracker at all.
Tales from the Trenches is brought to you today by the letter C for Cracker. Because sometimes a stale, boring saltine is better than nothing at all.
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