A toast to the stuffed olive.

I live in a ghetto apartment in the Elms. I've lived there far too long--since the fall. My fall and winter semesters were wonderful, however, because I lived with my best friends, our apartment eventually becoming known as Neverland because we were Lost Girls and never wanted to grow up. Rather fitting. We became very close and then what did they do? They up and left me for the summer--three to Jerusalem, one to Peru, one to Australia, Fiji, and New Zealand (she's back now, thank goodness). Luckily, I have the hilarious memories to keep me going. During our time in Neverland, we labeled our roles in our quasi-family:
Catherine was the grandma because she was way too responsible, organized, and clean to be a college student...and she was also crazy and did inappropriate things that we loved. Lisa had two roles: the dog and the father. The dog because she is the happiest, most loyal friend you'll ever have. She would never do anything to hurt you and she is always satisfied. The father because she worked at Brick Oven Pizza and would come home late at night, loosen her tie, put her feet up and eat her nasty $1.00 Banquet TV dinner. Ah, it was too funny. I know, you had to have been there and you're probably thinking "Kelsey, get on with it." Patience.
Brittany was the fairy godmother because she'd randomly make very fatteningly wonderful chocolate chip cookies for everyone or say happy little things in a sweet voice like a fairy godmother. Although, we all know she was the most negative of the entire group because she'd usually say awful things in the middle of a normal conversation, usually just liking to play devil's advocate and try to make Neverland more realistic.
Didi was the brat teenager because she wasn't afraid to sass anyone and would usually try to spark controversial conversations to get things exciting. Plus she had crazy style, wouldn't shower, and is a beautiful emotional roller coaster that makes our lives more exciting and enjoyable.
Candace--Beats--she's the mom, hands down. The woman was born to be a mother--like, literally coming out of the womb wanting to help other people and sew and cook for them. She took care of all of us and listened to our sob stories and supported us, making meals, sewing on our buttons, crying with us, etc.
Me? I was the crazy aunt. Never understood why.
Now, as roommates, we literally did act more like sisters than anything. We loved being together all the time and were rather an initimidating group of women because of our intense personalities and sassy senses of humor. Needless to say, we had a choice group of men come to visit us:
Anders Aabo: the happy, impulsive, well-travelled business major from Norway who had a wonderful accent that we'd always try to mimick but never quite could. He made us so happy with his visits to MACKdonald's, Aladdin pants, motorcycle, green minivan named Plankton, homemade longboard, hot air balloon rides, total lack of hygiene, the way he said "pliz pliz pliz" instead of "please please please", random vacations to all of Europe, Mexico, Hawaii, and southern Utah, urging Craig to not be rude and "Eat a coookie!", and undying love for all of us no matter how insane, emotional, or ridiculous we were.
Yanal Issac: our Muslim friend from Syria attending BYU who just so happened to be a world-champion boxer and demonstrated his punching strength per our request on our sad, weak little wall, making a large, lovely holel which we then covered with a happy birthday sign. He'd attend our weekly dance parties once in a while and told me that I should be a belly dancer in Syria. Why had I never thought of that? I then asked him to bring me back a scarf from Syria after Christmas Break. He returned not with a scarf, but a belly-dancing skirt (you know, the ones with the gold coins that jingle everytime your hips even slightly move) along with a cd of Syrian music and strict instructions to go to Youtube and look up videos on belly dancing so I can learn. I now don the belly-dancing skirt to every dance party I can. No, I have not Youtubed the actual dance...yet. Maybe I should go do that.
Prince Early: our black rapper friend from Chicago. The guy could flow like nobody's business and we quickly learned every song on his cd and sang along with him at his concert at the Velour. Usually when he was at our apartment, we talked about love, prejudice, and rapping. He usually ended up hugging us all and saying, "Yo, dis apartment is just so full of love, man. I just feel it. It's beautiful."
There was also Paco the Peruvian who helped Brittany learn Spanish, Ian the Asian from Canada who wore jeans so tight it looked painful and who I'm pretty sure took his roadbike to get anywhere, Vadim the Russian with whom I was supposed to fall in love according to my sister-in-law but was just too...Russian?
For some reason, we attracted the foreign men. We had hopes of organizing a Foreign Date '08 where each of us would take a foreign man, but that's too organized for us and our brains would have exploded simultaneously.
Why were most other men afraid to step through our door? Well, we had a theory that we regularly tested on the men who visited us. First, though, we'd insist that they guess where we were all from. Ya, I know, HI please label us!!! but still, it was funny. The best was always when one of the girls would get all offended at being pegged for a Utah girl. Really? Is it that bad?
If they had survived the simple "Guess where we're from!" game, we would then explain our theory:
"Imagine that life is a Halloween party. You walk into the party and notice three girls in particular. The first is dressed as an angel. She is SO pretty and SO sweet. She says all the right things at the right times and giggles at all your jokes, making you feel like a real man. She doesn't have many strong opinions; she's easy to get along with. She's just perfect--a total angel.
The second girl is dressed as Catwoman--the tight, black leather pants and tail included. K, this girl is HOT. She's super sassy and sarcastic. She is totally mysterious, too: she could be into you and totally flirting with you, but, then again, she could have flirted with every other guy at the party. It's hard to tell. All you know is that she's sexy and sassy.
The third girl is dressed in a paper mache stuffed olive costume that she made herself. She's also sporting red tights for the pimento. This girl is hilarious. She is crazy and out there, not afraid at all to be herself. She has strong opinions and isn't ashamed to share them. She's a ton of fun to be around."
After setting this up, we would then ask the man, "Which girl would you ask out at the end of the night? Which girl do you usually go for? Why? Now which one would you label each of us?" This quickly helped us get to know the guy, not just by analyzing his answer, but watching him defend it, listen to his reasoning, critique his mannerisms. We had a ball doing it and it was a fantastic icebreaker. We once had a man sum up the three girls: the angel is the girl you want to marry, the catwoman is the one you want to date, and the stuffed olive is the best friend. Good summation. Very true.
Usually, though, men thought we were crazy and wouldn't come back after our analytical interview.
Of course, our apartment was a conglomeration of several stuffed olives. And we were proud of it.
To all of the stuffed olives out there: I toast to you.