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A reality check of sorts
I’ll be honest: I didn’t receive any chocolates, roses or plush toys this most recent Valentine’s Day due to the absence of a significant other.
I expected a bit more from college, to be honest. I envisioned myself gliding down Rugby Road with a skirt that left nothing to the imagination and a Solo cup in my hand, the very epitome of collegiate class. Well, my fantasies of wantonness have not, to say the least, been fully recognized.
This really shouldn’t come as such a shock to someone whose high school years were occupied largely by bowling and incessant “Friends” reruns, but I nevertheless pictured college to be something of a fairy godmother to me, completely transforming my social existence with a shower of glitter and empty beer cans.
Instead, I sit in my dorm on a Saturday night, perusing my tagged pictures on Facebook instead of a newly acquired plethora of male phone numbers, and chugging orange soda instead of jungle juice. I drink so much orange soda, it’s a miracle my best friend’s name isn’t Kenan and I don’t work at Good Burger.
Even those same Facebook photos are similarly pitiful — further evidence for my lack of a quintessentially collegiate social life. You will find no sorority squats hidden in the meticulously groomed “Tagged Photos” section. Actually, I once tried sorority-squatting in front of the rusty mirror hanging in my matchbox of a room, and I simply looked as though I had been unable to find a restroom for 24 hours.
To avoid this sad reality, I Facebook-stalk my high school boyfriends — confirming my suspicions that they are all newly “in a relationship” with fresh-faced, short-skirted sorority girls who are no doubt living out the harlot fantasy I myself once dared to envision. Well, I have come to terms with the fact that my dream of flooziness lies in its grave; “life has killed the dream I dreamed,” as a fellow Les Miz nerd might put it.
This past Valentine’s Day, you would have found me plopped on a sad little couch with a mug of orange soda, watching some generic chick-flick or another with my three suitemates. And even though it was the complete antithesis of what I would’ve imagined myself doing on Valentine’s Day a year ago, I would honestly have it no other way.
I’m coming to terms with the fact that I am just simply not made to be a party-girl who consistently has three guys hovering around. That’s just not me. I like bowling, and orange soda, and “Friends.” And I love my real friends; I wouldn’t trade our nights together for some half-rate Valentine’s Day with a mediocre guy, even if he had come bearing roses and overpriced chocolates.
Laura’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at l.holhouser@cavalierdaily.com.
