More tales from the Meglet Crypt

Yeah I do. I completely forgot about that promise. But I'm good for it!

Let me tell you why this picture will forever be one of my favorite pictures of all time, despite the fact that it was taken the summer after fifth grade, a.k.a. the start of the darkest time of my life. Besides right now, I guess.

This picture was taken during my Girl Scout troop's trip to Savannah, Georgia, birthplace of Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low. That was a unique trip. And not because we stayed in a HoJo by the airport and I had my first panic attack during an intense game of sharks and minnows, which was misdiagnosed as dehydration and I had to chug Gatorade until I pissed myself. Well actually, yes, because of that, but also because our troop went to Juliette Gordon Low's house/Girl Scouts Museum for an all-day learning jamboree type thing about technology, and it was there that this picture was taken.

Before I get to the root of this story, you should know a few things about my involvement in Girl Scouts: like most activities I've taken part in, it was motivated mostly by the outfit. I really wanted a Girl Scout's uniform and I wanted patches—glorious, glorious patches!—so I joined Girl Scouts in fourth grade with my friends Meagan, Melissa, Markita and Teresa.

We were kind of the, oh how do I say this politely?, the assholes of our troop. We didn't take part in any of the activities (SAVE FOR ROLLERBLADING AT LONGWOOD REC CENTER DAY!!!1) and had a penchant for wandering off at meetings and hiding out in the teacher's lounge to get hopped up on Sprite and talk shit. Which, I should mention, we thought we were so badass for doing. In retrospect, there's actually nothing less badass than taking a break from your community service group to drink caffeine-free soda in a room surrounded by teamwork posters and abandoned tupperware. But, I digress.

My friends and I were in typical "badass" form at the Girl Scouts and Technology...thing. There was some long presentation (which we obviously didn't pay attention to) and after it ended, we were supposed to break up into small groups and write a 30 second skit to perform in front of the entire jamboree about the importance of technology in society or some shit, using the costume chest to enhance our performances. All we heard, however, was "blah blah blah blah COSTUME CHEST!!!!! blah blah." Meagan, Markita, Teresa and I quickly formed a group, threw elbows to get to the costume chest first and shotgunned three matching princess dresses, which Meagan, Teresa and I wore while Markita settled on this bizarre Friar's costume she found at the bottom of the chest that kind of went along with the princess theme. If you squinted.

During the allotted time to write our skits and while the other groups performed theirs, our group did one thing and one thing only: SPUN AROUND IN PRETTY PRINCESS DRESSES!!! Who can think about writing when you're wearing a princess dress?!?! Guess what I'm wearing right now? A Jäger thong that someone hit me up on Twitter to send me (if you thought I was too good to get my underpants from fans via Twitter, you are sorely mistaken), a t-shirt that says "I'd Rather Be Fishing" and that's the ballgame. Why? Because you can't write well when you feel attractive; everyone knows that.

Before we knew it, we were the only group who hadn't performed and were being called up on stage. I can not impress upon you enough how mortifying this situation was. We didn't have anything prepared—we were in medieval princess costumes to do a presentation on modern technology, for Christ's sake. We kind of stood there on stage staring at each other and exchanging awkward, "uhhh.........uhhhhh's", when out of nowhere Markita, who suddenly had a novelty oversized brass key from the costume chest in her hand, threw on a pair of Oakley sunglasses, took center stage and yelled, "DROP A BEAT!" Meagan, Teresa and I looked at each other with the fear of God in our eyes and rigidly shuffled back and forth while we did a little, "boom-boom, kschhh, boom-boom kschhh". Markita began to rap:

Yo, yo what's up?

I'm Friar Tuck

And I've got the key to technology

So if you want to see my key

You've GOT. TO. BELIEVE.

You've GOT. TO. BELIEVE.

PEACE.

And then she walked off the stage. A hush fell upon the crowd as Meagan, Teresa and I shifted our eyes back and forth and slowly stretched our arms out towards the audience all, "TA-DAH?" More silence. And then the crowd burst into applause. We were the hit of the fucking jamboree, despite the fact that our stance on technology was that for it to be effective, you had to believe in it, like it was Tinkerbell or some shit. I will never forget the lyrics or the tune to that rap for the rest of my life. It's etched in my memory. Like...I would record that now and release it for sale on iTunes if I could. It was just that groundbreaking. The picture above was taken just moments after we got off stage and that is why, despite being from circa middle school, it will always be one of my favorites.

Little did I know that something similar would happen eight years later, only with less successful results. I took some hippie dippie sociology class my sophomore year of college with my friends Ashleigh and Christie to fulfill a Gen-Ed. I completely forget what the class was officially called, mostly because we exclusively referred to it as "Hot Kianda's Class." (RIP) (Side note: I appreciate that even The Washington Post article about his death makes a point to mention that he was "handsome and scholarly." Because I said god damn; yes he was.)

One day Hot Kianda made our class go to a symposium about I-don't-remember-what-but-it-probably-involved-race-class-and-gender-because-I'm-sure-at-least-two-of-those-were-in-the-class-title-because-it's-AU at Howard University. Now, I'm going to be honest with you—sociology doesn't interest me at all. I appreciate that it interests other people, I applaud those people, but to me, sociology is about as interesting as a box of hair. Truthfully, probably less interesting. Thus during said symposium, I kind of just sat in the back, zoned out and listened to the Howard gospel choir rehearse in the auditorium next door. I figured when all of the (many) speakers were done, that would be that and the symposium would be over. Incorrect.

After that we were placed into groups for a group dialogue about...race, class, gender-y...things. To make matters even worse, I was the only person from AU in my group. I was the AU representative in a group of Howard and GW sociology majors and grad students, which should have frightened the shit out of the AU Sociology Department. To make matters even worse still, we had to go around the group and share what constitutional amendment we thought had the most social impact on race, class gender, race, class, gender, jargon, jargon blah.

I was fucked. I couldn't even name a (non-Prohibition related) constitutional amendment, nevertheless one that had to do with whatever the fuck we were talking about. As we went around the circle, my heart started pounding, I began sweating profusely and I couldn't breathe. I had no idea what to say. As the person next to me began speaking, all I could think to say when it was my turn was, "I'M SO SORRY, I'M AN ART MAJOR AND I'M TAKING THIS CLASS AS A GEN-ED AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK ANY OF YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE I DON'T DO ANY OF THE READING AND I JUST STARE AT KIANDA'S ASS DURING CLASS AND WONDER IF YOU COULD BOUNCE A QUARTER OFF IT AND THE IRRITATING THING IS I'LL STILL END UP GETTING AN A IN THIS CLASS BECAUSE IN DESPERATION I'M GOING TO GOOGLE THE TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM QUESTIONS AND THE ANSWERS WILL ALL BE ON LINE AND IT'S NOT MY FAULT FOR DISCOVERING THAT. IT'S NOT. MY. FAULT!!!!"

But I couldn't say that. So in the micro-seconds between someone telling me it was my turn and me opening my mouth to speak, my options boiled down to:

1.) Go the "WWMD (What Would Markita Do?)" route and rap my way out of it. Which, given my audience, seemed like a grossly inappropriate thing to do at the time.

or 2.) Slaves. Just say, "Slaves." Slavery was legal, then it wasn't, a constitutional amendment made that happen, race was involved, just say "Slaves," hope they think you're high and move on.

By the time I opened my mouth and got "S—" out, the proctor interrupted and announced that time had run out and we had to move on. Everyone in my group apologized that I didn't get a chance to share, I vomited in my mouth slightly, shook like a leaf the entire metro ride home and that was that. Fucking Gen-Eds...

Although, I should say, that class was completely worth taking and not just because of Hot Kianda. You know that token dick in your class who always has something to say about everything and is a pompous asshole and spells "color" as "colour" and you just want to set them on fire? Well, that person in Hot Kianda's class was this god awful girl who I obviously couldn't stand. As she got ready to give her final presentation towards the end of the semester, she plugged her laptop into the projector and gave the class a bit of a warning:

"I just want to say before I turn on my computer that a friend pulled a prank on me and made a gross picture pop up on the screen every time I start my computer or wake it from sleep mode and I don't know the password to change it. I apologize and thank you." Click.

And that's when a giant picture of a naked girl sucking off a very well endowed donkey popped up on the 10-foot wall of one of the giant lecture halls in the basement of Ward and stayed there for about eight seconds, while Bitchface had to stand next to it in shame and Kianda got so flustered that he walked out of the classroom all together. And it was the most magical moment of my life up until that point.

It was trumped, however, two years later when through a series of technological fails, my meeky Costume Design professor was forced to ditch his work computer and plug in his personal laptop into the projector. As he searched the folders on his desktop for whatever it was he wanted to show us, some kid raised their hand and pointed out (and I swear to Christ this is all true) that one of the folders on his desktop was named "Hot Cunts". Incredibly flustered, our professor clicked the name of the file and mashed the keyboard with his fist to rename it anything. PER CHANCE, in doing so, he had renamed the file "JIHAD".

"Sir, now it says, JIHAD!"

...Projector mishaps are amazing. Thank god I believe in technology.