Cashier: Oh Vaseline, is that really good for chapped lips? Me: Yeah, its good for chapped everything! C: *averts eyes* you wanna receipt?

The example in the title of this post is not the most embarrassing occurrence of me drowning in my own words before I know I’ve even said them. Mostly because I don't ever have to see that cashier again, so that makes it a fun anecdote pull out for the future. Unless of course I tell it to someone who follows me on twitter or has read this, then I'll get an attempt at being polite, but always mood crushing, "Oh yeah I saw that. That is funny." I know I'm guilty of it, but saying something is funny is worse than not laughing at all. It feels like when my suitemate calls me "Honey," while clarifying something, its both demeaning and endearing— it reminds me of when I was twelve and my aunt told me I couldn't play scrabble with the grown ups.

If you don’t get the concept of my words getting away from me, please try and reread the previous paragraph and email me if you still have questions.

Okay, now that everyone is on the same page, metaphorically in understanding and literally on this webpage, let's get down to some humorously self-deprecating stories!

Sidenote: it just occurred to me that if the demand for writing puns and situational humor wasn't limited to newspaper comics and lines for dorky characters on sitcoms, I'd be raking in the cash.

There’s a super cute ROTC guy who lives across the hall from me. Once I was taking out the garbage and recyclables, holding one bin on my left hip with two bags of garbage on top, balanced gracefully against my face, with another recycle bin tucked under my right armpit. I didn't know cute ROTC boy was behind me at first, but he watched me use my foot to close the door and then struggle to lock the door behind me. Being a classy gentleman, he asked if I wanted help. Naturally I declined, because I’m constantly try prove I'm not as helpless as I look.

Thirty seconds of struggle later, I get my door locked.  When I get to the elevator I have to tame a mortified wail, because cute ROTC boy has been holding the elevator for me while I wobbled down the hall for six years. In the elevator, one of my bins slip, but I make an spastically agile recovery. We make eye contact and both know that something must be said, because I am small girl in an elevator smothered under a bunch of trash, and it’s as unignorable as a small girl in an elevator smothered under a bunch of trash. 

Cute ROTC boy says, "That's a lot of trash." I say, “Yeah its not really, I mean it is, but like I’ve taken out way more than this before, not all the time but you know like sometimes when I just forget to take it out or something, but its really no that much…” He laughs and nods, apparently speechless. I look away, staring down intently at my they-dont-smell-so-they-cant-be-that-dirty sweatpants in hopes that if I stare hard enough he will forget I exist.

Another great run-in with cute ROTC boy, was also in the elevator. I was not sporting large amounts of garbage this time. Actually I did my make-up that day, had a cute outfit and I was wearing my favorite Steve Madden boots. With my confidence boosted an inch higher at my heel, I felt brave enough to redeem myself. I initiated some successful small talk without anything going awry. Then after frigid, small talk we started talking about how elevators are always awkward and it broke the ice.

But that didn’t last long, because my success was filling my super cute boots with toxic amounts of confidence. We stepped out of the elevator together and I started telling him a story about getting blocked by three really fat girls, who were walking really slowly in the hall and were just far too fat for me to pass them. Lovely, no?

Realizing how not okay that was, I became hyper aware of the situation, but I was unable to stop myself. The seams of my boots burst at the weight of my cockiness, and I fell through the ice into the paralyzing cold. I was frozen outside my door when I reached the end of my rude, fat girl blockade story.

It would have been normal to talk for a minute or two more outside our doors, but since I was drowning in my story, every word I tried turned to gurgles and I freaked. I whipped around, fumbled for my keys and said in one breath, "Uh okay well see you later!" I didn't even give him time to say anything or look back to see his reaction. I haven't seen him since. I suspect he looks out his peephole to make sure I'm not there before leaving his room.

What’s that? You want one more story? Okay, but then you have to go to bed and I’m not singing you a lullaby after.

I had an interview for an RA position a couple weekends ago. The day consisted of all us applicants being grouped off and given various teambuilding exercises, while hall directors and current RA's watched and took notes on us. Sounds weird and scary, but I’ve been training for group tasks my whole life. The family I was born into is the muggle-equivalent of the Weasley’s. Learning to negotiate, take turns, and work with people even when they are really annoying or have awful ideas are all skills I learned to survive. I left feeling really cocky and sure I nailed it.

The next day was the personal interview. The pressure to fill pauses with whatever pours out of my mouth was as great as the pressure in the Bathypalegic Zone of the ocean. So that those of you who missed the Monster Squid special on Discovery Channel don't have to google it, that’s the uber deep, pitch-black ocean layer where they got awesome footage of a Giant Squid. To add to the immense pressure of a normal interview, we all had to go through three, fifteen-minute interview sessions, each in front of a "panel" of four interviewers. 

The first one went really well. One hall director really liked me, which made me feel awesome, because they are the ones who actually hire people from the final pool of applicants. He asked, “As an RA, you would be subjected to “The Fishbowl Effect,” a term we use to describe RA’s being on constant display for their residents. How would you adjust to this change if you were to be hired?”

 I replied, “Well the first thing I would do is probably wear less sweatpants…” to which the director cracked up and announced, “That’s a great answer! I like this girl!” His praise gave me time to devise the second part of my answer into a professional, yet honest reply about being a role model and all that jazz.

The next session started out great too, now that I think about it, this is going to sound remarkably similar to my cute ROTC boy/fat girl story disaster. One of the RA’s interviewing me was a gorgeous, fashionista-type girl with big, curly hair that only hip, black women can pull off (sorry to any of you tried to achieve this look with a perm last century, but you looked absurd so you may as well laugh at yourself because the rest of the world is doing it).

I’ve been obsessing over this type of hair lately for unknown reasons. In fact I’ve been caught gawking in jealously twice at girls on the bus with this awesome kind of hair. Both times I had to pull the evasive maneuver where you look at like three other things to act like you’re just taking in the scenery.

Anyway, I automatically idolize her and want to impress her because of her hair. Then she complements my boots—that darned Steve Madden again, I think his boots are becoming a motif, or my hubris, either way, this will definitely return and be essential part of a joke I make by the end of this post so take note of it. I thank her and my inner girly-girl starts sashaying around in triumph while filing her nails and talking about Project Runaway. Then she secretly accepted me into the Cool Girl Club by complimenting my whole outfit. I told her I borrowed part of it from my roommate and we bonded over the benefit of having friends with good style.

I get through 14 minutes of interview questions, without following my human instinct to repeat my mistakes in a different guise. That is until they asked me about what my experience with diversity has been at WMU and what it brings to the community. My cupeth, or more appropriately, my booteths were runething over with a fine wine made of Cool Girl Club membership card and the morning’s good vibes.

With all inhibitions lost to my well-marinated boots, I answered by telling the honest to Morgan Freeman truth, “As writer I love eavesdropping and just listening to normal people talk and that in the cafs, when I hear people speaking a different language I will sit by them and just listen to them because I like how it sounds.”

Yup. I told her that diversity means to me I can creep on foreign people, while I eat alone at in the caf. The president of the Cool Girl Club told me I was kicked out and asked me to leave my boots at the door. Of course she didn’t say it out loud, but she tossed me a what-the-crap-are-you?-please-drop-out-of-society-entirely glance. That’s the official procedure of Cool Girls Club. I realized too late, that once again my boots were full of too much confidence. I had obliterated the once gently broken ice and fallen into the water again.

I tried to swim back to the top and stick the arms of my jacket to the surface of the ice like I saw someone do on Discovery Channel. I implemented evasive maneuver Lambda: lying until it hurts. I hurriedly tacked on that I introduce myself to the people I creep on. Added another lie that I’ve meet many people from all over who come to WMU and I find it fascinating. Finished by lying “Diversity brings to WMU the chance to connect with people that seem different and find intrinsic commonalities.”

My last ditch attempt to resurface failed. The four uncomfortably tight smiles sealed the waters with a fresh layer of ice. Accepting my fate, I sunk slowly and fashionably down to the Bathypalegic layer, and waited patiently to be devoured by a Giant Squid. It’s really hard to swim when you’re drunk on confidence and wearing such nice boots.