“I’m a transfer, that’s why I’m taking a freshman level class. Are you a freshman?” I asked.
You’d have thought I had asked if he tortured puppies. I thought for a moment he wasn’t going to dignify my question with an answer when he said, “I’m a senior. I simply didn’t have time in my schedule in years past.” He said schedule all run together and slurry like a British person. It made me feel like asking for some Grey Poupon mustard.
The more we talked the snootier he became. I wondered if the class would ever begin. Then the most awkward thing of all happened.
“My schedule is rather packed, but perchance I might squeeze in some time and we might go out this weekend?” he asked.
Okay, I’m all for live for the day and seize the moment and all that. But in a three-minute conversation, now that was too fast. Yep, let’s try that little eraser trick again.
Once again I was sliding into class with five minutes to spare. The seat was still empty next to Mr. Geoffrey Hale. And it could stay that way. I found myself a spot at the front. Oh how I loved that pink eraser. Life was good.
-11-
Dorm Life - Love It or Don’t
Life had become so much easier with the ability to rewind. I must have used that wonderful, fabulous magic eraser daily for the first week or so. Like the day I forgot to bring my homework to Señora Aburrida’s Spanish class. Okay it was really Albert, but she was boring. No homework, no problem. One wave of Super Eraser and I remembered to bring it with me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a magical Spanish-speaking eraser and I still got a D on the assignment. Maybe I would have been better off trying to talk my professor into letting me turn it in late and getting some help from someone better at Spanish than Olivia.
But, try as I might, the eraser would only ever give one chance to make a change. I learned rule number two one frantic morning a few weeks later from Olivia and her diamond earrings.
It wasn’t my fault. It was a normal frantic morning in our suite. Everyone had put off getting up until the last possible moment and then we were all frantic to get ready on time. Rachel was sitting on the floor by our full-length mirror drying her hair. Stina was bent over the sink brushing her teeth, while Olivia was leaned over her looking into the mirror putting on her third coat of mascara. I was hunting for a clean cami that matched my shirt. Maybe a slightly dirty one would have to do. So digging through my dirty clothesbasket, I heard the shriek of a banshee and the rapid flow of Spanish cuss words. Well honestly, I really didn’t know what the words meant. We hadn’t gotten to the swear words chapter in Señora Aburrida’s class yet. The words could have meant peanut butter and jelly, but with the force they were coming out of Olivia’s mouth it didn’t take a Ph.D. in linguistics to hypothesize that they weren’t nice.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Stina was responding at just a slightly lower decibel. “I didn’t know they were there.”
“Those are DIAMONDS!” Olivia responded as if that made a difference in the situation.
“Well, what were DIAMONDS doing sitting on the side of the sink next to the toilet?”
Time for Rachel the peacemaker to intercede. I don’t think we would have ever lived through the year without blood being drawn if it wasn’t for Rachel’s never failing reason and patience. “It’s okay, guys. Look someone just has to reach in the toilet and get them out. Oh gross, who didn’t flush?” Then again in some situations even Rachel wasn’t the best diplomat in the world.
I rapidly thought back. Oh crap. Well, I didn’t crap, but I had forgotten to flush after I peed. Someone had been pounding on the door for me to hurry. I didn’t wait for the jury to come in on that one. Not to worry. Magic eraser to the rescue.
“Hurry up in there,” Stina pounded on the door.
Business done. I turned and flushed. No diamonds in pee now. Off I went to dig through my dirty laundry for a semi-clean cami. It was only a minute later I heard the Spanish cuss words again. But how could that be? I’d done a do-over. That’s when the realization came to me. I had flushed, but I hadn’t thought to move Olivia’s earrings. Just because I changed one thing, it didn’t change the actions of the others. The earrings were still in the toilet, but thankfully not in a urine-filled toilet. I’d go back a second time and move the earrings. I tried the eraser again, but nothing happened. I tried again and again. I quit trying when Stina and Olivia both looked at me waving my hand through the air like I was one can short of a six pack.
Rules I had figured out. Number one—can’t fix everything by doing it over. Number two—one use only in any situation. Oh and rule number three—I had to get out of the suite quickly before Olivia killed Stina and I had to testify at the murder trial.
Fleeing the room early left me ahead of schedule for class. That was a rarity. It was a beautiful September day. Some trees were just beginning to turn reds and oranges. Those that had leaves left. As is normal in Oklahoma there had been a drought in July and August, so most of the leaves had just turned brown and fallen off.
I cut across the oval to my Spanish class, trying to remember if it was nouns or verbs that were suppose to be conjugated and why. I didn’t see him until I smacked right into his back. Books went everywhere.
“What the. . .?” were the first words Mr. Gorgeous ever said to me. They were beautiful. It was as if he were speaking lines from Romeo and Juliet, they fell so eloquently from his lips. “Oh, hey, are you okay? I’m sorry,” he added to his soliloquy. He bent to pick up my books. “I guess I stopped short,” he apologized, even though I knew it was my fault. What a gentleman.
Did I wittily reply, “Oh, no the fault is all mine and here’s my phone number, and insurance verification.” No, I just stood there gaping like a goldfish in a bag of water.
“I guess you knocked her mute,” came a sultry voice from his side. It wasn’t until that moment I became aware that anyone else was near, or even on the same planet. Miss swimsuit model, with silky black hair, six-foot long legs and ginormous boobs (they had to be fake,) was standing leering down her perfect nose (also, probably fake) at me, the mute. This black haired vixen was the epitome of the evil, conniving, manipulative other woman. She was so obvious that it only took six words out of her mouth and five seconds for me to come to that conclusion. “Oh, and you might want to zip your pants,” she added with a stage whisper to be heard all across campus.
Mr. Gorgeous, down on his knees picking up my books, turned to look at me which gave him a straight shot at my unzipped jeans. And needless to say I wasn’t wearing my granny panties that day.
I thrust my hand into my purse and waved my eraser with much more thrust than needed looking like a swashbuckling demented pirate.
So I wouldn’t meet Mr. Darcy Jr. that day. There would be other chances. I just couldn’t have him tell our future grandchildren how the day we met my pants had been unzipped and showing my new pink sparkly thong undies.
-12-
Jane Austen Vs. The Taliban
Overall classes at my new school went fine. My new Old Testament class wasn’t much different than my old Old Testament class. But at least I wasn’t known as dog-poop-shoe-girl there. I had tried to do that over, but again the magic only seemed to work on current happenings—it couldn’t go back more than a few minutes or at most an hour.
Nineteenth Century Lit. was going to be a challenge with Dr. Jamison. Especially if I ever slipped and called her Dr. Jekyll again. Other than the monstrous pile of hard work and the fact that I hacked the teacher off on the very first day, it was the type of class in which I thrived. To be in an upper level literature class, where we could have deep and meaningful conversations over great literary works was like shopping with a $20,000 prepaid Visa card. Bliss. No more listening to inane, half-asleep frat boys make shallow or crude remarks about Madame Bovary’s ovaries or that Mr. Knightly really was gay.
La—ah had decided to be forgiving about my first day’s faux pas. Even though we were different in almost every way possible, she was lo
ud, confident and hilarious, while I was awkward, quiet and insecure, we soon found that we were kindred spirits, as our favorite girlfriend Anne (with an E) Shirley would have said. By the third week we were study buddies along with Kasha from the K’s.
Once singled out from the herd of K’s, I was able to see Kasha as an individual. She was darling cute, and when not giggling insanely and finishing her posse’s sentences, she was actually quite intellectual. This I discovered one day while discussing the feminist movement as seen through the works of Austen and Bronte with her in class.
“Dr. Jamison, you keep talking how Jane and Charlotte wrote about the plight of women. Up until I took this class, I always just thought they wrote love stories of the happily ever after kind,” commented La—ah.
“Oo and I so loved that Mr. Darcy,” said Kasha. I think I saw Butch nodding his head in agreement.
“Austen and Bronte did write some page turning romances. And it is said that Austen had all her stories have happy endings because her life didn’t. But let’s delve deeper. If you look beyond the romance, why were our heroines in their dilemmas in the first place? They were either being expected to live off the kindness, or the lack thereof, of extended relatives. Or they were being forced into loveless marriages for financial security. Titles and lands were passed to the male heir. Thus, poor Elizabeth was almost forced to marry Mr. Collins to keep a roof over her family’s head. Or Jane Eyre was sent to relatives, and boarding schools and hired out as a governess. We owe so much to the women who worked to give us equal rights here in our own century,” expounded Dr. Jamison.
“Yet, marriage for necessity is still around,” added Kasha. “And not just to pay back student loans.” Everyone in the class laughed. “Look at the women in Afghanistan who are under the Taliban. They have to wear those cumbersome, stifling burqas.”
“I saw on the news that they weren’t allowed to see men doctors so they have one of the highest pregnancy death rates in the world, one out of eight,” added Butch our token guy in the class.
“All because of modesty rules,” said Kasha. “I must have seen the same report. It seems absurd in the 21st century. I know that there were many political reasons we went to war with the Taliban, but I always have been proud that our soldiers were able to make it possible for women to go to school and have some tiny freedoms in their own country.”
“Preach on girlfriend,” added La—ah. We had suddenly changed from a literature class to a tent revival.
“Amen sister,” chimed in Dr. Jamison. That woman could morph personas so fast, like from super intellect to soul sister, at any given moment. Then she also could rapidly turn so wicked it was a wonder a house never fell on her. “How about you Lottie? What can you add to our discussion?”
Up until that moment my brain was just humming with a plethora of profound hypotheses, yet the moment she said my name I did my best imitation of Snooki on Jeopardy.
“Well, I um, I um, I always had the hots for Mr. Darcy, but Mr. Knightly was actually a kinder character.” Did I really just say that? For the love of Jane Austen, I had to change something fast. I started digging for my eraser in my purse.
“Excuse me? Are you now looking for a better answer in your purse?” asked Dr. Jekyll.
I found it. Gave a wave and hopefully saved my dignity.
“How about you Lottie? What can you add to our discussion?”
I pondered for a moment with my best highly intellectual look on my face. “It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when women couldn’t inherit property or had to face a life of poverty if they didn’t marry well. But, as my grandma loves to remind me that before the 70s very, very few women in the USA were considered for any job other than secretary, nurse or teacher. And even today women aren’t always paid the same salary as their male colleagues.” Good save, Super Eraser.
“Good point, Lottie. Sadly our time is over for today.” With that she reminded us of our enormous reading assignment and that we needed to begin work on our research papers.
There I was, over a month into the semester, and with the help of my wonderful, fabulous magic eraser, life was finally going great.
-13-
Cookie Dough & Dishing the Dirt
Fall break had come and gone. It was amazing how fast the end of the semester was approaching. When all those papers were assigned back in August they had seemed so doable, the end of October they were suddenly impossible. As always I had procrastinated.
Fall break had already come and gone. I had twenty-two sightings of Mr. Gorgeous. Still no introduction. I had almost met him four times, but all in bad situations that had required a do-over. I had spied him in the cafeteria numerous times. Always with the “theater” crowd and that black haired skank. I found out from Olivia that she was also a theater major named Taylor. To paraphrase Olivia’s description, she was not a very nice girl. Go figure. Twice I noticed him picking that nasty, trampy, Taylor up in his adorable red Miata. Once he saw me watching, but with a quick little flip of my wrist that scene was rewritten.
I spent some time looking for him on social medi I had been able to find him in photos of mutual friends. But he didn’t seem to have his own page. Yes, I was a Facebook creeper. And a stalker. I either needed to find a twelve-step program to get over this fantasy perfect man, or I needed to call in the big guns.
I’m an American girl. I went for the ammo.
“You look a little stressed tonight,” Rachel said after my fifteenth sigh while reading Jane Eyre. It was 11:30 and Jane was trying to figure out the mysterious secrets surrounding Mr. Rochester. I still had two chapters more to read for the next day’s class and a paragraph for Old Testament to write, yet all I could do was wonder about a guy I had never even officially met. It was time to take a break from Mr. Rochester’s secrets and get answers to a few questions from this century.
“I think we could all use a cookie dough break,” Olivia declared as she went to the mini-fridge and retrieved the Holy Grail.
“Olivia, Stina, you two know everyone on campus. There’s this guy. . .”
I was quickly interrupted.
“Tell me, tell me. Please don’t say Geoffrey Hale. He is soooo stuck on himself. Every girl on campus thinks she wants to meet him and after two minutes changes her mind.” Stina was on a roll. “And that British accent he uses is so fake. Why, he’s from Talala, Oklahoma, for pity sake.”
“I bet it’s that Jacob Smith. He is cute. I’ll give him that. We went out once. That’s all it took,” Olivia spoke as the all-knowing authority on men, which she was. “Nice guy, but cheap!! Took me to a restaurant and used a coupon and then asked me, me—Olivia Corazon—to leave the tip. Why I never. . .”
“Oh yes, you have,” interrupted Stina.
“And we’ve been there to put you back together each time,” added Rachel with sympathy, not ridicule in her voice.
“Well, not with cheapo Jacob-o,” Olivia responded. “Enough about me.”
That was a first. I’d never had a conversation where Olivia had decided that there had been enough emphasis on her.
Olivia continued, “So, who is the guy?”
I started to sweat. My heart was racing. It was absurd. There I was just asking about a guy, like the outcome of the conversation was crucial to my entire future. He was just a guy I had seen across the campus a few times (make that twenty-two.) Just an absolutely gorgeous specimen of the male species. Not that I’ve been staring. Just thought about him a few times. Okay every night for weeks. He was just a guy. And it was time I left the realm of fantasy and started on reality. Good or bad.
“I’ve noticed this guy once or twice on campus. I’ve passed him when I was late for class a few times.”
“I didn’t think you were ever late for class. You seem to have some built in clock that always makes you punctual,” said Rachel.
It was hard to keep all the real time and do-over time sorted out when telling what had happened in a day which too often was comi
ng off as if I were either crazy or a habitual liar.
I couldn’t give them his name, although I had discovered it through my social media stalking. Instead, I tried to play it like I only knew a few facts about him. “Well, um. . . I think he might be a theater major. I saw him go into the auditorium a couple of times.”
“Well, that narrows it down. Male. Theater major. That leaves about twenty guys,” Rachel started the process of elimination.
“Oh, but she said he was cute,” Stina added. “That eliminates about ten. Olivia, who are the hunk actors on campus?”
“What color hair?” she asked.
“Brown. With just the perfect highlights,” I was blushing. How stupid. “Real highlights, not fake. The kind you wish the beautician could get just right in your hair.”
“Height?”
“Perfect.”
“What is perfect?” Stina giggled.
“You know. Tall enough to give that feeling of protection, but close enough to be able to reach up and kiss.”
“I think you might have happened to see this guy more than a few times,” Rachel said in her all-knowing voice.
I was beginning to feel like I was on CSI Oklahoma.
“Does he have a car?” Stina asked back in a just-the-facts mode.
“I think I might have seen him in a little red convertible. Maybe a Miata.”
“Oh, honey child, I’m so sorry. That’s Al Dansby,” said Olivia with actual sympathy on her face.
“Oh Al. Yes, he is cute,” agreed Stina in a sad voice.
Obviously the thing with the black haired fashion model must have been more serious than it appeared in my not stalking observations.
“What’s wrong with him? Does he have a girlfriend?” I had to ask even though I didn’t think I really wanted to hear the answer.
“You wish that was the problem. No, he’s gay,” responded Olivia matter-of-factly.
Do-Overs Page 5