storytime

Regaining Normalcy: Flame Girl Saga

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sinesalvatorem:

dragonsmagiccircle:

sinesalvatorem:

The day after I escaped from The Freaky Kidnapping Facility, I had a calm, civilised talk with the college admin about security. I impressed upon them the importance of having security procedures that don’t let sock-wielding kidnappers drive into the campus, pick people up, and roll out like nothing ever happened.

I only screamed a little bit. I only kicked a potted plant once. I’ll admit that half the screaming I did was a direct consequence of having kicked a potted plant, but I never claimed I made the best decisions. What matters is that after my terrifying-yet-unbearably-cute rantings, they increased security. Which is to say, they implemented security. Being scaredorable works! Never again would travel-sized students have to worry about involuntary shipping and handling!

After half a day spent watching over my shoulder, eyeing the knives in the cafeteria warily, and giggling senselessly at the mere mention of mitochondria, a representative from student affairs told me to take the rest of the day off. I was disappointed yet resigned. Just because I could heal (and get off on) a stab wound didn’t mean I wasn’t traumatised.

After I was safely ensconced in my dorm-room, I pulled out my phone. I’d never been the most social person, so my contacts broke down neatly into four categories: Important authority figures – from college admin to the police – that I’d already screamed at as much as I cared to; my parents, who would learn of my kidnapping over my dead body

(they really would: I had set up a system to notify them should I become unresponsive); my study group, who would either be in class or, y’know, studying; and pants-less fire goddesses I’d promised to call. It wasn’t that hard to figure out who I could commiserate with at the moment.

“Hi!” I said, trying not to sound traumatised. “This is that girl from last night.”

“Hi!” A warm and familiar voice replied. “If it were any other ‘girl from last night’ calling and sounding this traumatised, I’d probably feel like a terrible person. As it stands, your response is pretty normal.”

“Uh, OK, I think.” I replied, eloquently. “Thanks, um, I actually don’t think I got your name -”

“Emma.”

“Thanks. I’m Clare. You sound… Really normal. Like, given the whole… Everything. The whole everything. Shit. I’m bad at words. But I’m sure you noticed that. I didn’t need to say it. Shit again.”

There was soft laughter on the other end. However, it didn’t sound like someone laughing softly, but someone holding the phone away to laugh loudly.

“Sorry,” Emma said when the laughter had died down. “I’m really sorry. I’m just kind of giddy. Like, I’ve been in bad situations before, but I kind of expected to die. I’ve never had to deal with people with that much resources. Usually a couple muggers or burglars – rarely organised crime, and never this.”

I was really sorry to here that Emma lived in such a bad neighbourhood that they were constantly dealing with criminals. It made me feel lucky to live in a place so safe that, until today, there was no campus security. Although, seriously: what was up with the whole no security thing? That didn’t feel right.

Wait a second. Emma was waiting for a response. I’d zoned out mid-conversation. Crap. What was I supposed to do at this point? Make sympathy noises? Which ones? Why didn’t human interaction come with a manual? Or even just a regular text book. I could probably do a better job cheering up some Gram-negative bacteria than anything this macro. I just said the first thing that came to mind.

“I’m sorry to hear that. You must live in a pretty rotten neighbourhood.” Yes, I insulted her home. Smoooooth, Clare. You must be a real hit with the flame-ladies.

“Oh, no.” Emma assured me. “It’s pretty nice here. Workload’s pretty low. In fact, if I want to do the most good, I should probably move downtown. That’s where the real bad guys are.”

Do the most good? What? Was she a social worker? That might explain why she could stay so positive-sounding in the face of all this craziness. I’d never imagined Gram-positive bacteria trying to cheer me up.

“I’m sure the people you work with really appreciate how altruistic you are,” I told her. Honesty probably works as an OK sympathy-signal. Or not. I’d know if anyone had been so kind as to give me a manual. I couldn’t even tell if this was an appropriate time to ask her out. Despite my best efforts, I’d been unable to locate a copy of The Gay Agenda, either.

“I actually work alone.” She informed me. “It’s not like there are enough criminals to justify two idiots in tights chasing after them.”

…Was this a euphemism? I could sort of see the stuff about tights and chasing, but where do the criminals come in? I’d only learned the meaning of “booty-pirate” last week, and I didn’t think it was relevant here. But what did I know, really? I probably missed an entire lexicon by avoiding all humans during high school. This could be the most transparent thing in the world to everyone else.

Sigh. I guess I would have to suck it up and admit that I was confused.

“Um, I’m sorry, Emma, but I don’t really know what you’re talking about.”

“I mean I’m a solo crime-fighter, of course. I’m not a part of any superhero teams. I’m a lone wolf. I know; shocking, right? I guess that means you roll with a pack, right?”

…………

“You’re a superhero!?”

“You’re not!?”

“No! Definitely not! I only learned I had powers yesterday! I learned them as a result of getting stabbed by a torturer! This is a thing!?”

“Oh my God, I totally need to get you up to speed. There’s so much to teach you! Let’s meet for coffee tomorrow afternoon. Know anywhere good near you?”

“There’s a coffee shop on campus, and I can be there at 5:30.”

“Great! Don’t worry about directions – I’ll just use my ~super powers~. See you then!”

Wow. So…. Wow. The third most surprising thing to happen in my life: superheros exist.

The second, of course, was the whole torture/kidnapping debacle. I still needed to sort out my shit after that.

However, they both failed to compare to the Most Astonishing Thing Ever:

Holy shit I’m going on a date tomorrow!!!

(Major thanks to ilzolende for editing and good suggestions.)

Wait wait wait… I need to find part 1.

Part 1 is ‘Didn’t Want To Move Because Wet Chocolate Mousse’. You can find it by following the tag ‘flame girl deserves a phone call’, which I’m using to organise the story.

(Part one was initially just some random dream so, while part one is definitely cannon for all subsequent parts, the reverse is not necessarily true.)

Tags:

#storytime #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #reblogging the version with context included

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sinesalvatorem:

cinder-ember:

During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?

Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.

The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.

Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.

Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.

Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.

Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.

Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.

Sunday Night: Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise – apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.

Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.

I think you meant The Best Prop.

Tags:

#Beauty and the Beast #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

Anonymous asked: [langford. png] ~🌙★reblog Meatbane Parrot to ward your blog against uploads and meatscum★🌙~

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ilzolende:

ilzolende:

luminousalicorn:

Okay, leaving aside the incompetence of this apparent attempt to embed an infohazard, why would a parrot be a good mascot for warding off meat?  Parrots are made of the same stuff.  Why not “reblog Meatbane Terminator” or something?

Outside-Setting:

Thanks for getting me (both you and the commenter) to look up Langford’s Basilisk content!

He’s apparently an SF author, it’s great.

Read this! Or, if you’re ridiculously paranoid, turn on an image blocker and read it. ;)

…Probably one of the reasons I like it is it’s fictional evidence for “don’t censor kids’ lives”, despite the fact that it is not an actual argument for not doing that.

That is probably supposed to be the point, but I was distracted by “don’t blanket censor, fine-tune censor”. I would expect biochips to work more like antiviruses, selectively blocking the dangerous bits and leaving everything else intact, though at the cost of a window of opportunity where weapons that are new enough can still affect you. (Mind you, the window of opportunity would still be far shorter than their current one. The Parrot’s been around for so long that kids old enough to hold their own in adult conversations can’t remember a time before, and it can still affect people? Really?) Rendering yourself blind should be an option available for the paranoid just as disconnecting your Internet access is an option available for the cyber-paranoid, perhaps also the “site whitelist” system like what they’re currently using, but these should be neither the first choice nor the only ones available.

Yes, vaccination would be better still, but my complaint is not so much “they should do that” as “why aren’t they already doing that?”. Not the ideal, but the baseline upon which they should be improving.

Tags:

#infohazards #(I read it with an image blocker on principle) #reply via reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

bogleech:

It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.

I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.

How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?

Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.

 

mikhailvladimirovich:

HOLY SHIT THEY EAT CAPSAICIN FOR FUN

YOU GUYS I HEARD A HUMAN ONCE ATE AN AIRPLANE.

A HUMAN CAN KEEP FIGHTING FOR HOURS EVEN AFTER YOU SHOOT IT

humans are a proud warrior race with a pantheon of bloody gods: Ram-Bo, Schwarzenegger, etc.

REMOVING A LIMB WILL NOT FATALLY INCAPACITATE HUMANS: ALWAYS DESTROY THE HEAD.

WARNING: HUMANS CAN DETECT YOU EVEN AT NIGHT BY TRACKING VIBRATIONS THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE

WARNING: HUMANS CAN REPRODUCE AT A RATE OF 1 PER SPACEYEAR. DESTROY INFESTATIONS IMMEDIATELY

THE HUMAN MOUTH HAS OVER THIRTY OUTCROPS OF BONE AND POWERFUL JAW MUSCLES.

HUMAN BITES CAN BE FATALLY INFECTIOUS EVEN TO OTHER HUMANS

WARNING: HUMANS CAN AND WILL USE IMPROVISED WEAPONS. SEE CLASSIFIED DATA LABELED J. CHAN.

HUMANS CAN PROJECT BIOWEAPONS FROM ALMOST EVERY ORIFICE ON THEIR BODY. DO NOT INHALE

OH GOD THE HUMANS FIGURED OUT DOOR HANDLES OH GOD OH GOD

 

prokopetz:

More seriously, humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life. Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness – but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.

(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)

Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:

  • Our strength and speed is nothing to write home about, but we don’t need to overpower or outrun you. We just need to outlast you – and by any other species’ standards, we just plain don’t get tired.
  • Where a simple broken leg will cause most species to go into shock and die, we can recover from virtually any injury that’s not immediately fatal. Even traumatic dismemberment isn’t necessarily a career-ending injury for a human.
  • We heal from injuries with extreme rapidity, recovering in weeks from wounds that would take others months or years to heal. The results aren’t pretty – humans have hyperactive scar tissue, among our other survival-oriented traits – but they’re highly functional.
  • Speaking of scarring, look at our medical science. We developed surgery centuries before developing even the most rudimentary anesthetics or life support. In extermis, humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves – and survive. Thanks to our extreme heartiness, we regard as routine medical procedures what most other species would regard as inventive forms of murder. We even perform radical surgery on ourselves for purely cosmetic reasons.

In essence, we’d be Space Orcs.

 

friendlytroll:

Our jaws have too many TEETH in them, so we developed a way to WELD METAL TO OUR TEETH and FORCE THE BONES IN OUR JAW to restructure over the course of years to fit them back into shape, and then we continue to wear metal in out mouths to keep them in place. 

We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analouge traps. 

And by god, we will eat anything. 

 

siderealsandman:

  • We use borderline toxic peppers to season our food. 
  • We expose ourselves to potentially lethal solar radiation in the pursuit of darkening our skin. 
  • We risk hearing loss for the opportunity to see our favorite musicians live. 
  • We have a game where two people get into an enclosed area and hit each other until time runs out/one of them pass out
  • We willingly jump out of planes with only a flimsy piece of cloth to prevent us from splattering against the ground. 
  • Our response to natural disasters is to just rebuild our buildings in the exact same places. 
  • We climb mountains and risk freezing to death for bragging rights
  • We invented dogs. We took our one time predators and completely domesticated them. 
  • On a planet full of lions, tigers and bears, we managed to advance further and faster than any other species on the planet. 

Klingons and Krogan and Orcs ain’t got shit on us

 

moniquill:

We drink ethanol (in concentrations high enough to be used as an effective as microbicide or a solvent!) for the express purpose of achieving blood toxicity and disrupting normal brain function… AS A RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY!

On the same subject, we also deliberately incinerate assorted substances and then inhale the particulate-heavy smoke and vapor resulting for the same effect. EVEN IN THE FACE OF SAID SUBSTANCES BEING CARCINOGENIC, BECAUSE WE JUST DON’T GIVE A FUCK.

 

therobotmonster:

Humans do not have biological castes. Kill their commander and another will take its place. Soldiers left alone on a planet will start farming and manufacturing to survive. Farmers and manufacturers will take up arms and kill you if pressed. Just because two humans look different doesn’t mean they cannot do each other’s jobs.

Breeding does not kill them. A single human can mate dozens or hundreds of times in a lifetime. They often do so as recreation. Xenobiology team six believes they do not have a mating season but this is too strange to be true.

Their appendages are not designed for hitting, so they developed special training to make them very good at hitting anyhow. 

The proteins making up their bodies are toxic and cause prion disease. Do not touch anything humans have touched. Do not consume earth foods. Fire does not adequately remove this contamination.

Humans perceive sixteen times the colors we do. Do not hide in bushes or vines from humans. They can distinguish your pelt from the foliage with ease.

We tried venting waste gas into the tunnels to kill the humans when they attacked. Turns out they breathe it. 

Everything on their planet came from a single biological strain. They developed comprehensive genetics BEFORE they developed space travel. 

They lack radio receptors and cannot be brought into compliance with right-thought simply by broadcasting to them. Even after we learned how to translate it into sound-waves one of their hatchlings drove the Great Authority mad by responding to every demand with a single question: “Why?”

 

silentstep:

#an individual human being is actually a microbiome in its own right—you are dealing with a legion each time you approach them     #they carry pathological agents inside their deep tissues and this is advantageous to their health     #one of the most widespread and resilient viruses on their planet is treated as mildly hazardous—even though it causes     #massive disruption to the body’s homeostasis     #(their young offspring endure multiple rhinovirus infections EACH YEAR yet they seem unperturbed by this)     #they have developed such long lifespans that now their primary threat is their own body’s degeneration     #humanity has literally figured out how to survive so long that their body gives out under them     #and they are not satisfied with that     #stupid willful vengeful survivalists who treat mortality like a challenge

 

adhesivesandscrap:

“Human beings are verminous fucktards” ~ Karen Traviss

Tags:

#oh look an update #I was actually just thinking about this post #but I hadn’t seen the bit after the lack of radio reception before

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

koryos:

all RIGHT well the gay dreidel rave wasn’t exactly as exciting as it sounds but i’ll go over the tale in brief.

BASICALLY during my senior year of college I lived in possibly the most homosexual apartment you’ve ever seen- out of the four occupants not a god damn one of us were straight and we just had a rainbow spectrum of sexuality goin on in there. not that this was unusual at my college, which was fairly deep liberal- we had a competition with our across-the-quad neighbors over who could hang more gay pride flags out the window.

(we thought it was a competition anyways; maybe they just coincidentally were adding more flags)

We also had four axolotls, eight fish, and briefly a colony of twenty-five mice and both the mice and the axolotls were spotted having gay sex* so BASICALLY it was a hella gay time all around.

Ok so anyway I happen to be Jewish, which to a lot of people is just REALLY EXCITING and just SUPER UNUSUAL and so as it approached December during the first semester I lived there two of my roommates came back from like Wal-mart with a huge light up dreidel**. And they gave this to me. And ignored when I pointed out that it was kind of a shitty dreidel because it was round, so it didn’t even fall on a side (if you don’t know how to play dreidel, the dreidel is supposed to land with a Hebrew letter facing up that tells you what to do). This thing was not even functional.

Anyway they ignored my logic and I do have to admit despite the heinous flaws it had it was pretty cool because not only did it light up in different colors when it was spun but it actually came with a beyblade-esque pull chain so you could literally LET THIS DREIDEL RIP and it spun for a long fuckin time.

I think my one roommate and I spent a good 20 minutes or so sitting on the floor (her with a glass of wine) watching this thing spin very mesmerized.

So then my other roommate came in and carefully took off his shoes and then spotted the dreidel and was like, “Is that a light-up dreidel?” and we were like, “Yeah.” and he was like, “Can I turn off the lights?”

So he turned off the fuckin lights and SUDDENLY THE GOD DAMN DREIDEL WAS FLASHIN LEDS EVERYWHERE and that shit was BRIGHT like god damn and my roommate and I locked eyes and then she ran for her laptop and I put the dreidel on the table and to the sound of dense techno I let that shit rip.

So I’m sure people from outside could see the colored lights flashing through our window shades and hear the thumping base so it probably gave off the impression of a heck of a party but in reality there were four gay nerds grinding against each other around our kitchen table next to these tinny laptop speakers and a god damn beyblade-ass light up dreidel.

I think at some point someone was naked and more alcohol came out and someone probably started cooking corn or mushrooms (90% of my college diet) but the rest is a blur. That was the great (?) gay dreidel rave of ‘12. I think we had a second one but it wasn’t quite as good. Which makes sense because you really can’t capture lightning in a bottle twice.

Basically this story about sums up my senior year***.

*Ok the gay axolotl sex was more like two males doing the cloacal-nuzzle wiggle swim with each other but that’s about as close to penetrative sex as axolotls get. I wish I’d gotten a video of it- but I DO have a video of the lesbian mouse sex somewhere around here…

**These are the same roommates who once burst into my room and dumped a bag of glittery fishing lures on top of me.

***Ok no it doesn’t because there was also the Sex Files incident and the neo-nazi Chinese deliveryman and all the times I accidentally dumped 50 gallons of fish tank water into the downstairs apartment.

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #storytime

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ghostabletoastables:

when i was very small i assumed this song was about some lady who literally kept a human face in a jar by the door and since father mckenzie buried her that meant that he also killed her and basically i thought eleanor rigby was about zombies until i was like 12 years old

 

bnprime:

YES!

 

catsuitmonarchy:

This is the first time I’ve ever liked this song.

 

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

This is the best ever alternate interpretation of that song :D

 

edmpr1nc3ss:

Elanor Rigby is clearly a leviathan.

 

labbydragon:

Given how many times I had to play this song in my college instrumental ensemble class, this had breathed new life into this for me.  And imagining the look on my professor’s face if she ever saw this given her Beatles obsession is kind of making me giggle.

 

beautifulinourfashion:

I’m not sure what my 13-year-old Beatle fanatic self would have thought of this, but now I think it’s a damm fine narrative arc.

 

ursulavernon:

I support this interpretation wholeheartedly.

 

draqued:

I want so desperately for this to have been the intended story.

 

aberrant-eyes:

Reblogged for camwyn, who’s identified Father Mackenzie as MI# based on “writing the words of a sermon that no-one will hear”.

 

camwyn:

Yeah, I was never really very clear on what the face-in-the-jar-by-the-door was supposed to mean as a kid, but the idea of a priest conducting services for no one at all didn’t really jibe. And then somewhere along the way I read enough Tom Clancy or watched enough James Bond to realize that, y’know, some people just don’t officially exist… they might not be down on paper but spies have spiritual needs too. Or at least the need to talk to someone who understands, even if they don’t necessarily believe. Armies and prisons and hospitals have chaplains; why shouldn’t the spooks? Eleanor Rigby was a spy with a talent for disguise; Father Mackenzie was the only priest the intelligence agencies trusted.

If Father Mackenzie takes individual confessions I suspect he goes through an awful lot of brandy, because I can’t imagine having someone like 007 show up with something bad enough to actually weigh on his conscience can be an easy thing to hear about. And the seal of the confessional wouldn’t just be a religious/moral thing under those circumstances, but one that also came with the knowledge that if he did let anything out, there was a bullet with his name on it.

(I’m also reasonably sure that the funeral he conducts towards the end of the song is actually pretty jam-packed. It’s just that Mackenzie is the only attendee who officially existed; the others all came because nobody outside the agency even knew the assignment number, let alone the name, of the poor sod in the box. But the spies take care of their own.)

Tags:

#oh look an update #hadn’t seen the spy one before

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

amusing-fallen-angel:

applesandelephants:

thisisurheichouspeaking:

Art dump part 4

okay story time

so my art teacher assigned us to do a chalk pastel still life of fruits n shit and I was like “no”

so I drew a banana instead.

and my teacher came by like “you need to have more than one fruit in your still life”

so I was like “k”

and so I put that cherry on top of the banana and titled it “Banana Split Without The Ice Cream Because Life Is Full Of Disappointments: By Fall Out Boy“ and I turned that shit in.

My art teacher just started laughing out loud in the middle of class

this is my new favorite thing

best title ever

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

agirlcalledfrost asked: OH OH OH PLEASE TELL US A BOARDING SCHOOL STORY PRETTY PLEASE

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ofgeography:

so my school had this thing called “senior skip day,” except that senior skip day didn’t exist and every year the administration sent out emails in the spring that were like DON’T FUCKIN SKIP CLASS OR YOU WILL RECEIVE RESTRICTION (restriction was like, my boarding school’s equivalent of detention where instead of staying after school you had to go to bed early and help stuff envelopes advertising the summer program until your hands were BLOODIED AND CRIPPLED BY CARPAL TUNNEL) and every year the seniors were like YOLO THEY CAN’T PUNISH ALL OF US!!!!!

  • spoiler alert: yes they can? THEY ALWAYS CAN.
  • 200 years of american high school and teenagers still think that there is a cap limit on kids in detention and that you can leave after 15 minutes if the teacher doesn’t show up.

anyway, my senior year, we all got together and nattered at each other until some brave soldier (i feel like it was my friend paula but WHO KNOWS) was like “OK SENIOR SKIP DAY IS THIS THURSDAY!!!! NOBODY GO TO CLASS OR UR A SCAB.”

  • she didn’t say scab because she’s not from the 1920s and we aren’t newsies, though this story would be way more interesting if we were
  • what she said was “YOLO THEY CAN’T PUNISH ALL OF US!!!!!”
  • except not yolo because it was 2009 and drake hadn’t been invented yet except as a dear sweet boy in a wheelchair.

we also used this email system to communicate with one another that has very deeply informed the way i understand email and which probably makes it very frustrating to be my friend and receive emails that have subject lines like “URGENT” and then just 42 links to the same florida georgia line youtube video.

  • I’M NOT ASHAMED, but in that way where like i kind of AM ashamed so i’m really aggressively NOT ashamed? 

so the day of reckoning rolls around and my alarm goes off at 8 (class started at 8:05 but i liked to PLAY WITH FIRE when it came to being late; my mom actually asked the school to stop emailing her when i was a sophomore because i was late so often that their rote “Mrs. Ofgeography we are emailing you to say—” was CLOGGING UP HER INBOX and she was like “i GET IT MY CHILD IS THE MOST BORING MISCREANT OF ALL TIME.”) and i looked at my roommate elle and she looked at me and went, “you going?”

“hell no,” i said. “YOLO. they can’t punish all of us.”

elle, who was far prettier and far cooler than i was with the notable exception of her obsession with tswift’s “love story” and her tendency to look at the endangered species list and cry sometimes during study hall, quickly bizounced across the street to this shopping center thing where all the cool kids smoked in secret where huge trucks dropped off clothes for the Dress Barn. i think there were also tennis courts nearby. more importantly there was this chinese food delivery place and a lil restaurant that made HELLA BAGELS.

  • WHAT KIND OF BAGELS?
  • FUCKIN
  • HELLA.

off goes elle! meanwhile i’m like, “yessssss i’m gonna use senior skip day to watch 14 hours of tv shows and eat frozen peanut butter bars that i stole from the dining hall! I’M GONNA LIVE LIKE I’M 23 ALONE IN CHICAGO ON A WEEKEND WHEN MY ONLY PLAN IS TAKEOUT AND CUDDLING WITH THE FAUX-SNOW-LEOPARD BLANKET I WILL ONE DAY SURELY OWN.” 

of course, during this time the administration was continuing to send out emails that reminded us with increasing urgency that senior skip day was NOT A THING and that we were ALL GETTING RESTRICTION if we didn’t get our STUPID ASSES TO CLASS, GODDAMNIT, WE ARE NOT RUNNING A CIRCUS HERE. 

but i was like! yolo, motherfuckers!!! i already got into college, YOU CAN’T TOUCH ME.

at some point during the day elle and our friend ginna came back to the room with takeout from the chinese delivery place and we sat on our floor eating it and probably watching veronica mars or looking at the endangered species list and crying.

all of a sudden, elle said, “guys shut up, guys shut up, GUYS SHUT UP,” and ginna and i were like, “WHAT we have a LOT to SAY about FRIED FUCKING DUMPLINGS, ELLE,“ and elle said, “did you hear that?”

“hear what?”

“that!”

‘that’ was the sound of one of our dorm moms, mrs. f, knocking on doors and saying things like, “IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR BUTTS TO CLASS IN 5 MINUTES YOU’RE ON CATEGORY 4 RESTRICTION FOREVER.” elle quickly scampered up our raised beds to hide in the corner, where a tiny human like elle could actually hide from view; i leapt immediately into what we called a closet but was basically a cubby with a flap that was DEFINITELY not meant for a 5’8” individual with knobby as hell knees.

our door, which was never locked because we both hated the effort of typing in the lock code, opened. mrs. f said, “mollyhall?”

i held my breath. 

  • i should add here that i seemed to be operating on like a scooby-doo level of logic where basically i thought that she was somehow NOT ALLOWED to investigate?
  • like, if she can’t see me, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that she could prove i’m in here, right?
  • she’ll just poke her head in and be like oH GOSH NO KIDS HERE and leave!!

you can see the flaw in my logic.

mrs. f sighed. “mollyhall, i know you’re in here, i literally heard your voice ten seconds ago.”

  • there’s no WAY she guesses i’m in the closet!!!

“mollyhall, i know you’re in the closet.”

  • NO YOU DON’T
  • I AM SCHRÖDINGER’S SENIOR

“mollyhall—”

there was a creak. mrs. f stopped. it wasn’t actually a “creak,” so much as this like, prolonged groan? like it’s the sound an elephant would make if it sat on a really large accordion.

i poked my head out of the closet. mrs. f looked at me. elle sat up.

i said, “where’s ginna?”

  • YOU KNOW WHERE GINNA WAS.

“um,” said elle, “she’s in the—”

  • GINNA NO

ginna yes.

i really wish i could describe the sound the ceiling made when it collapsed. it sounded a lot like the way losing your breath feels. i sort of remember ginna falling in like, really slow motion, like i could see the expression on her face. i didn’t really think about how i would describe this in words. ginna’s face said:

  • oh no.
  • what have i done?
  • this was a mistake. 
  • i regret a series of decisions that i have made.
  • is there a way out of this?
  • are those oreos under mollyhall’s pillow?
  • why are there oreos under mollyhall’s pillow?
  • mollyhall, you HAVE a food cupboard, what good is a food cupboard if you don’t—
  • oh, crap.

she belly flopped onto the floor. i mean, the girl bounced. and then she just laid there. mrs. f looked at her. elle looked at her. i looked at her, still mostly in the closet. we were all going to get category 4 restriction forever.

ginna said, “hi, mrs. f. i feel like i should explain.”

Tags:

#long post #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #I generally hate stories about people getting in trouble #like it’s bad enough that *I* get in trouble #I don’t need other people’s trouble as well #but I like this one