Friday, September 19, 2008

In Which I Do My Brotherly Duty and Help My Little Sister Through Her First Night of College

A Facebook message exchange between myself and my little sister, who is spending her first night in college and not having such a great time:

Sara: The only friend I've made so far is hideously deformed.

Me: How so? Genetically or just as the result of a fire? And was the fire her fault or was it someone else's? These are important questions in establishing a sense of her character.

Sara: cleft lip.
I'm a very, very horrible person.

Me: Oh, god. She sounds awful. How's the roommate?

Sara: Not here yet. She comes on Saturday. The only people I have so much as seen on my floor so far are me and Kathryn. It's this dark, scary hallway that looks like a prison and I hear the ominous jingling of keys and footsteps but I never see anyone.
WHERE AM I?


Me: With the cleft lip girl it sounds like some sort of freak prison. Like an old man shoves you in his briefcase and inside is your dorm, where these people have been trapped for centuries.

Sara: you made me "l.o.l." which I can't do because I'm pretending to sleep so that my new, deformed friend doesn't come ask to play!

Me: "Do you want to meet my pets?" and then you go into her room and there are just hundreds of slugs.


Sara: oh god! I was laughing and there were footsteps outside and they slowed so I faked snored and they kept moving. AM I GOING TO HAVE TO DO THIS FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR?!?

Me: Why is she prowling?!

Sara: I don't know! She keeps walking to the bathroom, going in, running the water a little, and walking out. Maybe she doesn't have a shower caddy and so she carries in her toothbrush, wets it, goes back to her room, puts on the toothpaste, walks back, etc., etc.
Or maybe she smells that I'm awake.

Me: I got really grossed out picturing her brushing her teeth.

Sara: She probably has to use prongs to lift the left side.

Me: I'm going to barf.

But seriously, you're probably going to hate it and feel awkward and alone for a while because that's what college does to you. It makes you feel retarded and useless. Just go with it and eventually you'll meet your future best friends. And don't forget that my phone is always with me if you want to call or text or facebook message me. But since it's like 2:30 here, I need to go to bed. Call me if cleft lip is clawing down your door.

Good night and just make the best of it until it actually becomes fun instead of just funny.

Sara: Right now I definitely feel awkward and alone, mainly because I am completely and totally alone on my floor, except for a sideshow act. I have a feeling once people actually move in, it will be a lot better. Also, once I get a fridge.

Thank you Danny. You're a much better brother than that one of Kallie's that's in a cult in Iowa.


I think I actually helped. I'm not a useless older brother after all!

On a totally unrelated note, I'm getting very excited about Halloween. I missed out on all the main holiday season (mid-October to mid-January, obviously) last year, since Cairo is where holidays and joy go to DIE, so I'm planning on being totally over-the-top this year. As in buying and wearing a whole bunch of cheesy Christmas sweaters for the month of December.

For Halloween, I'm mostly starting my celebrations by eating a ton of candy and watching a lot of scary shit. I've never seen an episode of the X-Files before (not counting one episode back when I was a kid that freaked the SHIT out of me to the point where I've forced it entirely out of my memory), so I got the first season from Netflix. To get my blog in the holiday spirit, I think I'll be posting my favorite moments from each episode that I watch. The first episode should be up tomorrow or Saturday, hopefully (we're having a party Friday night and I have to go see My Best Friend's Girl tomorrow for The Daily Cardinal - UGH - so I might be too busy to do anything until Saturday), but rest assured, my favorite moment from the episode WILL be up soon.

I don't have enough time to do a full recap of each episode, much as I would love to, but hopefully this should satisfy you enough. If my small amount of Halloween fever isn't enough for you holiday maniacs out there, check out X-Entertainment, the best website of all time for nostalgia - especially around this glorious, three-month-long holiday season.

I don't know exactly what else I'll be doing as all these wonderful holiday seasons combine into a crazy monster holiday hybrid of commercialism and memories, but one thing I know for sure is that I will be documenting the Jones Soda Holiday Pack - a family tradition. That should happen around Thanksgiving, though, so that's way in the future. Any suggestions for more holiday fun would be welcome.

(I only wrote this post this late at night to try to distract my mind from scary aliens and other things that the X-Files is making me think about. But now that I ended the post with this little tidbit, they're still all I'm thinking about and all of this was worthless. I'm such a little baby. I'm going to be up for a while.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your conversation with your sister had me laughing my butt off. I can just picture the dorm scene in my mind. :)

Anonymous said...

Oh My God! Poor Sara!
I don't miss the dorms!