a cup of cheese

This week is homecoming week, which means each day unfolds another opportunity to engage in "school spirit." I lied to my mother once and told her I had seen the tooth fairy and described what she looked like, and now that I'm older and no longer find it necessary to fabricate lies that my nonexistent sister is living in the linen closet next to my room, I can just imagine the smirk she must've been holding back during my little fib. Yeah, that's how school spirit is to me -- just hiding the cheese in shrink wrap, teachers and principals assuming that if they can make the entire student body wear the same color, they could probably con them into reading shit-in-a-mug like The Scarlet Letter. And oh, they can. I was chosen to read a paragraph out loud today, and even though I was running through the words, I had no idea what I was saying.

Anyway. Today was "dress-your-best day," and I really wish I had known that while I was fumbling to get dressed this morning. I made the grave mistake of wearing a dress that drapes down mid-thigh with khakis underneath, and suddenly buckets of derisive classmates are doing double-takes in the hallway and asking me if, you know, I have school spirit, started snorting coke, the usual. On the upside, I think I've solved the dilemma that's plagued dress-garbed women since the beginning of seamstresses and textile mills -- having to tote cumbersome purses because of the absence of pockets, and having to sit like a soft spoken Japanese woman so everyone and their wheel-jogging hamsters don't get an eye-full of your cow-printed thong.

Word on the street is that Key Club (a volunteering club in which you can be suspended from performing volunteer work if you don't attend regularly) lost a hefty sum of money when their "homeless sleep-out" last weekend flopped. They told people near the entrance that electronic devices, drugs, and lighters weren't allowed because they detract from the homeless experience, but please feel free to purchase some snacks from the concession stand. So, because Key Club had lost so much money from that event, they set up a stand for homecoming week where you can buy a slice of colored fabric based on your grade level for twenty-five cents, and then tie it around someone's arm and "tag" them. As far as I know nothing really happens once you're tagged, you just have a pretty band around your arm and you feel sort of like a member of a revolution. I was tagged on the way out of lunch by a chick that was in my gym and photography classes last year, after she complimented by dress/khakis combination. So now I have this blue strip of fabric tied around my arm that as far as I know has no purpose, but it matches my dress.

On a side note, Pat's car has been in the shop since last Tuesday since the mechanics find another thing wrong with it on a daily basis, and now the repairs are leveling somewhere around $2,000 -- one-third of the original price of the car.

Oh, and piggybacking on the analogy I made earlier in this entry about the shrink-wrapped cheese, sometime last week this announcement came over the PA system that, on the outside patio area where kids sometimes eat lunch when the weather is pleasant, someone had thrown a cup of cheese on one of the windows, so the patio was to be closed the next day.

That's right.

A cup of cheese.

A cup of cheese.

That's pretty much the entire bag of sunflower seeds.

Later, skater.