Hi everyone,
How are you guys doing? Hurricane Lili was pretty ruff here, sorta like to food in China. Unfortunatly, it knocked out school for a whole two days. I've been sitting here catching up on some school work and trying to clean the place up a bit. My roomate Chris asked me to go to the movies with him and some friends last night, so I went. Once I got home, I thought the trip was well worth "Mass Email Status." You know, usually on these excursions, I have to exagerate just a little for comedic effect. One this one, however, no exageration is needed. It is rather long so it will be a two part series. Part two will be here tommorrow. Enjoy!
Part 1
There is a moment in every young man's life when he must tweak part of his personality and mature to become an older, more mature man. Tonight was not that moment. I was sitting in my room earlier, trying to catch up on my readings for a few classes, when my roomate Chris walked into my room.
"Josh!"
"Yeah?"
"Get ready boy! We going to the movies tonight!"
"All right. Who's going?"
"No, Who's in China."
"Kim and Steve are in China."
"Huh?"
"Which people are going to be at the show tonight."
"Lot's of people!"
"Ok."
"Josh, how about you dress up tonight."
"Dress up to go to the movies?"
"We're going to Burger King too."
"And I would dress up because?"
"Geez, Slim, do I gotta explain everything to you? The fact is you've been in a rut lately. I want you to pick up a chick tonight."
I closed my eyes and imagined KFC. "Yeah, I could definatly go for that. But why Burger King?"
"What?"
I then realized what he was talking about. "Wait a minute. I am not going to dress up to impress some girl. If a girl is gonna like me, I want it to be for who I am, not what I wear."
"Slow down, Slim. I'm not asking you to change who you are, just tweak it a little bit."
"No."
"Ryan is coming, and he'll be dressing up."
"Ryan Hutchinson?"
"Yep!"
"Ok, but not because I plan on 'picking up a chick,' but only because you asked me."
"All right!" said Chris as he ran to my closet. "Let's see what you got." He opened the door and searched through it. "First of all, I think we are going to have to look in another closet. Don't you own any nice clothes?"
"What about that blue shirt?"
Chris picked up the shirt and examined it. "Well, this crest is in a weird spot and the sleves just don't look even."
"Yeah, I bought it at a discount store for only two bucks. It's defected. But look, it's Tommy Hilfigure!"
Chris frowned and looked disgusted. "Well, maybe we can roll the sleves and pray nobody notices the out of place crest."
"Ok."
"What kind of pants are you planning on wearing?'
"Jeans would be fine huh?"
"Those jeans?"
I looked down, "Why not?"
Chris walked to my dresser and began to scrummage through my pants. "Ah! Now here is something we can work with!" he exclaimed as he tossed a pair of wrinkled kakias onto my bed.
I walked back to my closet and pulled out a very cheap, very bad iron. I plugged it in and laid my shirt on the floor. Chris looked at me with that same disgusted look.
"What are you doing?"
"Well, if I'm dressing up, I should probably iron."
Chris grabbed my clothes. "I understand that, but this is just pathetic." He then walked into his room, pulled out his iron and ironing board, and began to iron my clothes.
"Um, I can do that."
"Slim, I'm trying to teach you how to be a man in this world. Watch, observe, and learn."
Part 2
I pulled up to Ryan's apartment in my red truck. Chris had gone to pickup his fiancé Felicity. He asked me to pick Ryan up then meet him at our friend Amy's house. Before I had left for Ryan's I realized that I needed to do something in my truck about the no-AC situation. I had one of those nice, old cheap trucks that I was able to pay off before I drove it out of the car lot. Unfortunately, it didn't come with any AC. So now I was forced to choose between keeping the windows up and sweating, resulting in me smelling pretty ripe, or rolling the windows down and ruining the hair I had actually combed. I then remembered the portable fan in my room, so I slapped that sucker in the truck and took off. And now, here I was at Ryan's. I felt like an idiot. I couldn't believe that I actually let Chris talk me into dressing up in fancy clothes to go eat at Burger King. My one consulation was that Ryan would be dressing up too. I got out of my car and proceded to walk to Ryan's apartment. Ryan answered his door wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He then began to laugh.
"Haha, Chris got you to dress up huh? I didn't think you actually would, so I didn't. Hang on and let me go put some decent clothes on."
I followed Ryan back into his place. He screamed from his room, "Yeah, Chris talked to me about wearing fancy clothes, but I thought he was kidding. I figure this is ok though, because now these girls can see how good we look."
I looked at Ryan as he walked out and thought he would need more than button-up shirts and slacks for that to happen. I chose to remain silent on the matter, however.
We hopped in the truck and Ryan told me the portable fan was a brilliant idea. "It beats rolling the window down and messing up our hair," he agreed.
We pulled up at Amy's house then went inside. I then realized Chris Buckel's brillaint plan.
"Hey Josh. Hey Ryan," said Amy as she sat with ten other girls at the table, none of who where anything close to being dressed up. It was then that I noticed that one of the girls was Felicity. I was wondering if Ryan noticed the same thing.
"Hey Amy," I said. "Uh, hi Felicity." She was the only other girl there that I knew.
There was silence.
"Um, we were just about to have a girl's movie night," Amy said. "Sort of a girl's bonding night. I mean, you guys are welcome to come back another day and hang out but, I uh."
I didn't wait for her to finish as I walked out the door. Ryan followed in my footsteps.
"So Ryan, wanna go home?"
"Sounds good to me."
"Yeah."