I LIKE my bisexual friends

I had never met a bisexual person until I went to college. Then, I met three.

The first was the blue-haired girl who lived next door to me. She had a nasty boyfriend with man boobs, and I could hear them getting it on through my wall, but other than that, she was a fine person. She was very technologically capable and had a good CD collection.

The second was a chemical engineer, Keith. He had his first boyfriend last year and was getting in touch with his gay side. The positive side of that was that he did my nails (teal with black tiger stripes…very nice), and the negative side was that I heard about his sex life (I’ve blocked out that part of my memory).

The third was my best friend Anna. I actually wasn’t aware of the fact that she was bisexual until someone once told me that while he was drunk. Apparently Anna and her boyfriend had a deal that both of them were allowed to make out with girls…which was ridiculous because her boyfriend would never make out with someone else. Anyway, I asked Anna about it, and she said she was, but that I didn’t have to be afraid because she wouldn’t do anything with me unless I wanted her to. “You seem perfectly straight to me.” Another time, she told me that she thought I was hot, and if I ever wanted the experience, that she’d gladly make out with me. I told her that that wasn’t currently on my list of things I wanted to experience.

But regardless of her sexuality, she’s a ball of fun. On her birthday, I went out with her and her friends, which basically consisted of walking into random houses where there were parties going on, stealing their alcohol, and leaving. At one house, Anna hit the jackpot: she checked their fridge and found a bottle of good-quality vodka. After that, she was, as she said, she was a “drunken sunflower.” She walked up and down the streets jabbering excitedly, giving us all hugs, and telling me not to patronize her because I was sober (as always), until someone pointed out that a policeman was coming. She suddenly began to quietly walk straight.

“So are you not a sunflower anymore?” someone asked.

“I’m a sunflower…in disguise,” Anna replied, making a hand motion similar to the Vogue dance in Madonna’s music video.

That’s one sunflower that needs to stay disguised.

I LIKE dress codes

So the most fantastic part about going to school in Texas was not that I was surrounded by republicans and rednecks, but that unlike anyone else I’ve met…we had a dress code.
Skirts and shorts couldn’t be higher than 3 inches from your knee. No chains. No piercings other than ears for girls. No piercings for boys. No tattoos. Tanktops had to be larger than an inch on the sleeve. Nostrangehaircutsorhairdyedoddcolors.Noathleticshorts.Guyscouldnotgrowtheirhairlongerthanacollarwouldbeblahblahblahblahblah….
I also had the great luck of being National Junior Honor Society president, which meant nothing except that I got to read off the names of the new inductees. This was really simple, since there were probably only 5 people who had names that were not American. But I was proud of my role and decided to wear my sister’s cute, stretchy skirt to school that day to read off the names in because I thought it made my 14-year-old body look quite sexy. Of course, I paid no attention to the fact that it would ride up ridiculously the moment I walked a step.

Lesson learned: always look at the back of outfits...like this one from jqvintage.com...

I didn’t even make it to my locker before I got pulled into the office and asked to change. I did, and then right before I had to go to the ceremony for the inductees, I changed back into my sexy skirt. Our principal noticed, and he just smiled and told me to keep the skirt down. I didn’t think it was a big deal and shrugged.
The next day on the announcements, one of the pictures from the ceremony had a great shot of my rear. It was then that I realized exactly how whorish a short, tight, tan skirt looks. And I never wore that skirt again…until college at least.

I LIKE taking a box of school supplies to a school halfway around the world from me

In December 2004, a devastating earthquake in the Indian Ocean caused a tsunami to hit South Asia, affecting Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, and other countries. In June 2005, I went to Sri Lanka. A box of school supplies that my 8th-grade science teacher had collected came with me.

This woman was one of those who fight for the underprivileged and the hurt. Because she knew I was going to Sri Lanka in the summer, she asked if we would have room to take school supplies if she took up a collection. My dad agreed to it…and when we got to Sri Lanka, we realized that we would have to drive to one of the affected cities and deliver the school supplies.

After a day of driving, we finally arrived at the rest house we would be staying at, and then my dad suggested that we walk around the city. With our camera in hand, we went to see the damage that had occurred 6 months ago. There was no one on the beach because people were still scared of the water. Rubble from the tsunami still covered the area alongside the beach—the broken houses had plastic sheets covering the sides of them, and some people were living there. Every once in a while you would pass a newly-built building with a large sign that said that someone in Japan or another country had donated money for the structure to be rebuilt. There were also areas filled with little yellow-and-red houses that were built by UNICEF or another one of those organizations.

The next day, my father, sister, and I went to an army base and found a school to drop off the school supplies. After going to the school and talking with the man in charge, we gave the supplies and left.

It’s funny how easy it was for us to drive down there, spend one night being eaten by mosquitoes, deliver the stuff, and come back with our pictures and our “wow, we just witnessed the aftermath of an epic event” attitude. But those children still have to live with the tsunami. It’s their reality. A reality I can barely imagine even though I saw it with my own eyes.

That has made me so thankful to be who I am, where I am, regardless of all the petty FML moments I may experience.