Unwrap Me

In the collegiate tradition of Halloween, I dressed up for a frat costume party. It was a closed party and besides getting invited you also had to come in a costume. Sober security doubled in wardrobe malfunction police, you had to at least come through the door as a princess or ninja Turtle (Rafael and Donatello were there). I took the easy route, ribbons, wrapping paper, and a note from God. Yes, I was God's gift to Women.

It took me 5 minutes to put together, not including the run to the dollar tree for supplies. My friend Carey, who went as Scooby-doo, did most of the wrapping. First thing we did was the wrapping. It turns out the metallic red paper I bought was only 5 ft long and not the 15ft I thought I had seen on the packaging. So instead of going full body, I had enough wrap for one good turn around the middle. Next was the ribbon, neither of us could tie a ribbon so I just tied it around my waist and put one of those sticky bows on top. Last, and most importantly, was the gift tag which made the outfit. Carey helped me find and enlarge a Christmas gift card off the Internet, we erased the Christmas flare and printed it off.


The party itself was lamer than hell, but the costume went over well. Woozy girls would laugh and really appreciated the concept. After a couple of hours dancing and trying to stay out of awkward corners, Carey and I left and expelled our costumes. I loved that my costume was easily disposable.

This is a story about being in the right place at the wrong time.

When I first came to college, I knew that I would join a fraternity. I wanted to establish a social life on campus and I thought it would be a way to meet new friends. I joined the KDR chapter on campus because of my friend, Matt, from high school.

I have never had the stars align over head of me, but the series of events that happened afterward are just ridiculous. First, after being initiated, our fraternity got busted for underage drinking after already being on probation. The result of this was, probation for another year. No parties, no alcohol, no nothing. Basically there was no point in being in the fraternity.

I quit after a semester, along with one other pledge. We were tired of sitting through long meetings, when we couldn't actually function as fraternity. Basically it was all work and no play that semester. Plus, I had friends elsewhere that I would have rather been with than performing all this bull shit.

However, the main reason I quit was because of a church mouse named Jeff. Jeff was a pledge with me, and incredibly sheltered. The night we got caught drinking, Jeff wrote a complaint to the Dean. The fraternity, which was under conservative leadership, decided not to punish Jeff and instead took the blame for putting us pledges in that situation.

During this time I was getting shit for falling behind in my math models class from the pledge supervisor. I was carrying a 3.0 GPA, but he wanted to get on my case anyway. And then there were the f 'n pledge tests, in which I was always last to finish. Jeff on the other hand would actually study for these and would get praise from the other members.

What it boils down to is, the KDR's chose between Jeff and me. On one hand was the "Lets party and be a real fraternity" mentality, the other was "Oh no, drinking is bad and I thought fraternities were just study groups anyway". So after a brief statement to the fraternity, I turned in my pledge pin and left.

This was not an abrupt decision, and I never regretted leaving the fraternity. That is until this week, one year since I pledged. All my friends have since joined up leaving me behind, the probation has been lifted, and I can't form an intramural football team. Its just my luck.

I didn't know that you had to be in a fraternity to have a social life on this campus. So next semester I'll probably join something. I can't believe I could get so screwed.