Halloween at 22
I don't drink. So the crazy college party thing was out.
Work had flyers up all week: Dress as a literary character and win a prize if you're voted best costume.
So I dressed up as Laura Ingalls.
No one else dressed up.
While I'm a shoe-in for the prize, boy did I feel awkward.
Another thing that's been on my mind while deciding how I should celebrate at age 22: Costumes for women my age are all about being as sexy and racy as possible. They take innocent childhood heroines like Snow White and Dorothy and turn them naughty for the sake of sex appeal. I prefer to remain more innocent and dress up (if I do) in historically based costumes, like an Edwardian Anne of Green Gables or an Amelia Earheart. Am I too tame? Too juvenile? Or is this world too rauncy? The sheer thought of an exposed leg used to drive men wild. Now women have to do all sorts of extreme and increasingly hardcore things to elicit the same response. I really do wish to go back to the time when modesty was not looked upon with derision. And I wish living modestly didn't have to automatically mean Christian either. I'm a Buddhist, and I feel excluded sometimes. You don't have to believe in a god to believe in dignity.
Below: An example of a modest item that I like a lot
Meow part 2
Turns out the cat belongs to my English professor. She says he has an uncanny ability to recognize linguists. Interesting. I suppose I do speak cat.
Meow
I had very strange encounters with animals today. I parked my car on a side street and began to walk to school, and this big stocky furry grey tabby came running up to me meowing intensely. I pet it and it trotted by my side the whole way up the street, talking to me. When I stopped and pet it again and told it to go home because I had to go to school, it sat and started meowling despondantly when I walked away. I felt so guilty. I looked for it later but it was gone. It had no collar and was a little scruffy. I would have taken it home with me had I found it again.
Then later a crow landed at my feet, making me stop in my tracks and it stared at me. I walked around it and it just watched me.
It also happens to be my birthday. Wonder if there's something with my aura...
Sometimes You Just Need A Good Cry
I had a bad morning. So I watched this. And it made me feel a bit better.
Amazed and Confused (And A Bit Annoyed)
I go to a large state college in the Midwest U.S. I have noticed that as I walk to and from classes, at any time of the morning or day, I am invariably behind one or several smokers, and I am in the "lucky" position to inhale the foul clouds they leave trailing behind them. Its enough incentive to sweat and walk faster in order to overtake them for a chance at a lungful of clean air. The amount of smokers in my age group is astonishing. Why so many?
What I've been wondering of late is this: why, with everything we know about cigarettes in our generation, why do my peers seem to take to the nasty and deadly habit with such abandon? Everyone knows cigarettes cause cancer. If it is a matter of their apathy toward this fact, I think this represents an alarming sentiment that may be infecting my generation, and one that should be addressed. Is smoking still looked at as something to make the user seem more cool and grown up? How can ignoring your health be grown up? How can poor hygiene be cool?
Why does my generation, now at the peak of their youth (20-25 years old) and supposed vitality, embrace a substance that causes fatigue, poor respiratory performance, wrinkles, yellowed teeth, and an all-encompassing stench that seems to follow them and their belongings? Why would they not instead put as much money into organics and a healthful lifestyle that prolongs this age?
I am open to all opinions that might shed some light on to the self-induced plight of my fellows.
