Dicks All Over the Floor and Red Lobster: Foiling Search Engines in One Post

Giant Camel has moved back in, and has begun making collages out of construction paper and dirty magazines. In practical terms, this means that the floor of the apartment is covered in little cut-out pictures of dicks. I keep being afraid I’ll scoop one into my bag and take it to school, and then I’ll take my notebook out and one will gracefully spiral down to the ground, in front of God, the dean, and everybody…

So, the other night, I was hanging out with a friend of mine, who mentioned casually that he’d rather be smeared with honey and left out for army ants than go to his high school reunion. “It’s this year, you know.”

GUUUUH. That means mine is in three years. (See, I’m still 23, but my high school has them every eight years because of... oh, I don’t know. Pick something. Climate change. “Metric decades.”)

Now, I had a Meg-like bad time in middle school. Being weird and surrounded by thirteen-year-olds is, no raspberries, the worst thing that can happen to a person. We’ve dwelt with that theme often on this blog, and doubtless will again, so I won’t go into it here except to tell all you youngsters looking for your “trademark” not to adopt a fake English accent in the sixth grade. It won’t end well.

By contrast, I had the whizz of a time in high school. I thought I got away with a lot of stuff, but in retrospect I just had low standards of what was badass: “Totally getting migas” instead of going to a first period elective isn’t hardcore by most standards, but I thought it was cool. Anyway, even though high school was a lot of fun, I’ve been planning what delightfully zany thing I was going to do at the reunion since I was about sixteen. (“No, it’s totally going to be like Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, except we’ll get away with it. Also beer.”) Over the intervening ten oh dear God I’m never going to win a Fields medal seven years, I’ve considered the following delightfully zany reunion antics:

- Have sex with James van Dyne, the handsome and promiscuous soccer star I had a crush on in tenth grade (supposedly he totally got laid in the bathroom in middle school, which sounded pretty rad at the time – anything remotely sexual plays well to junior-high audiences – but which now strikes me as deeply, almost supernaturally depressing. Two fourteen-year-olds “coupling” for under a minute in a cinderblock, chronically underfunded public middle school bathroom. It’s what you’d expect if Sam Sheppard directed child pornography.)

- Fake a tig ol’ heroin addiction, complete with cold sweats and Magic Marker track marks. I don’t know what the end game is for this, really, except maybe seeing now much money I can make from former classmates who give me a sad smile and press a twenty into my palm.

- “Just show up all rich and shit.” It’s a classic for a reason.

- Get drunk enough to open up and let my opinions have a jolly little time running free (a.k.a. “Chris’s This-Wedding-Sucks Default”)

- Send a false report that I’ve died, then show up at the next reunion a-OK. “I thought it was rabies, but it turns out it was a bad Boone’s Farm hangover. Boy, was my face red.”

None of these are very good. I feel like they’re all intro-level wacky, the kind of party themes a slightly bitchier than average Junior League would think up if everyone was tired of Mardi Gras Mambo. I don’t want to just go, hug everyone, have four Tom Collinses, look at baby pictures, then go back to my hotel room and watch “Touched by an Angel.” Except for the baby pictures, that’s almost exactly what Meg and I did on our ill-fated business trip to Newport News. (We finance the blog by secret-shopping Red Lobster restaurants and making sure the biscuits are “just cheesy enough.” Our turf is Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, both Virginias and DC, so if you see two “artistic types” going to town on a pound of crab legs on your next big date, it’s probably us. Don’t say hello or you’ll blow our cover, but email where you saw us and we’ll send you a coupon.)

(No, not really. I just got comfortable in that Red Lobster joke and decided to stay a while.)

This whole thing is kind of a made-up problem, anyway, since my high school theatre program has a reunion on or near Thanksgiving every year, to which I have never been invited. I showed up on the “Can’t find these kids, LOL!” list one year – 2005, when I was genuinely hard to track down – but since then I’ve never been invited. Several people have said “oh, you should have come!” but… shit. Hanging out reminiscing about our mostly-white theatre department’s production of The Wiz is weird enough, but to crash a party to do so? I can’t quite get behind that. I almost just sacked up and went last year to brag about THE BOOK, but we weren’t completely sure we’d gotten the deal yet, and somehow I wasn’t all that inspired by the idea of going up to the high school and saying, “Yeah, I gained some weight, but me and this girl are writing a book about being unpleasant! So there! You thought you were such hot shit because you got cast as the Elephant Man and not me! WHO’S THE ELEPHANT MAN NOW, JACKASS!”

Haha! I just remembered the guy who actually did beat me for that part. He was 80 kinds of nuts. Zander (yeah, really) loved the movie Cruel Intentions and actively patterned his behavior after the Ryan Philippe character, which he was, to put it gently, way too ugly to get away with. He had a “notebook” in which he kept “secrets” about everyone in the theatre department and notes on how he plotted their downfall. We were sophomore theatre students in a high school in central Texas that would later almost be closed under “No Child Left Behind.” That is a fucking deep hole, ladies and gentlemen, and here he was with a shovel, just digging away…Anyway, I found out what his entry about me said. I skipped the theatre white-elephant-game Christmas party to go watch a movie, prompting him to write: “Chris didn’t take my Karate Elvis action figure to the Christmas party. He will pay.” I did not pay, as it turns out. Remembering Zander has, though, helped me make up my mind: I’m never going to one of those reunions. Nothing could ever top “Chris didn’t take my Karate Elvis action figure to the party. He will pay,” and it would be wrong to try.

More tales from the Meglet Crypt

Yeah I do. I completely forgot about that promise. But I'm good for it!

Let me tell you why this picture will forever be one of my favorite pictures of all time, despite the fact that it was taken the summer after fifth grade, a.k.a. the start of the darkest time of my life. Besides right now, I guess.

This picture was taken during my Girl Scout troop's trip to Savannah, Georgia, birthplace of Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low. That was a unique trip. And not because we stayed in a HoJo by the airport and I had my first panic attack during an intense game of sharks and minnows, which was misdiagnosed as dehydration and I had to chug Gatorade until I pissed myself. Well actually, yes, because of that, but also because our troop went to Juliette Gordon Low's house/Girl Scouts Museum for an all-day learning jamboree type thing about technology, and it was there that this picture was taken.

Before I get to the root of this story, you should know a few things about my involvement in Girl Scouts: like most activities I've taken part in, it was motivated mostly by the outfit. I really wanted a Girl Scout's uniform and I wanted patches—glorious, glorious patches!—so I joined Girl Scouts in fourth grade with my friends Meagan, Melissa, Markita and Teresa.

We were kind of the, oh how do I say this politely?, the assholes of our troop. We didn't take part in any of the activities (SAVE FOR ROLLERBLADING AT LONGWOOD REC CENTER DAY!!!1) and had a penchant for wandering off at meetings and hiding out in the teacher's lounge to get hopped up on Sprite and talk shit. Which, I should mention, we thought we were so badass for doing. In retrospect, there's actually nothing less badass than taking a break from your community service group to drink caffeine-free soda in a room surrounded by teamwork posters and abandoned tupperware. But, I digress.

My friends and I were in typical "badass" form at the Girl Scouts and Technology...thing. There was some long presentation (which we obviously didn't pay attention to) and after it ended, we were supposed to break up into small groups and write a 30 second skit to perform in front of the entire jamboree about the importance of technology in society or some shit, using the costume chest to enhance our performances. All we heard, however, was "blah blah blah blah COSTUME CHEST!!!!! blah blah." Meagan, Markita, Teresa and I quickly formed a group, threw elbows to get to the costume chest first and shotgunned three matching princess dresses, which Meagan, Teresa and I wore while Markita settled on this bizarre Friar's costume she found at the bottom of the chest that kind of went along with the princess theme. If you squinted.

During the allotted time to write our skits and while the other groups performed theirs, our group did one thing and one thing only: SPUN AROUND IN PRETTY PRINCESS DRESSES!!! Who can think about writing when you're wearing a princess dress?!?! Guess what I'm wearing right now? A Jäger thong that someone hit me up on Twitter to send me (if you thought I was too good to get my underpants from fans via Twitter, you are sorely mistaken), a t-shirt that says "I'd Rather Be Fishing" and that's the ballgame. Why? Because you can't write well when you feel attractive; everyone knows that.

Before we knew it, we were the only group who hadn't performed and were being called up on stage. I can not impress upon you enough how mortifying this situation was. We didn't have anything prepared—we were in medieval princess costumes to do a presentation on modern technology, for Christ's sake. We kind of stood there on stage staring at each other and exchanging awkward, "uhhh.........uhhhhh's", when out of nowhere Markita, who suddenly had a novelty oversized brass key from the costume chest in her hand, threw on a pair of Oakley sunglasses, took center stage and yelled, "DROP A BEAT!" Meagan, Teresa and I looked at each other with the fear of God in our eyes and rigidly shuffled back and forth while we did a little, "boom-boom, kschhh, boom-boom kschhh". Markita began to rap:

Yo, yo what's up?

I'm Friar Tuck

And I've got the key to technology

So if you want to see my key

You've GOT. TO. BELIEVE.

You've GOT. TO. BELIEVE.

PEACE.

And then she walked off the stage. A hush fell upon the crowd as Meagan, Teresa and I shifted our eyes back and forth and slowly stretched our arms out towards the audience all, "TA-DAH?" More silence. And then the crowd burst into applause. We were the hit of the fucking jamboree, despite the fact that our stance on technology was that for it to be effective, you had to believe in it, like it was Tinkerbell or some shit. I will never forget the lyrics or the tune to that rap for the rest of my life. It's etched in my memory. Like...I would record that now and release it for sale on iTunes if I could. It was just that groundbreaking. The picture above was taken just moments after we got off stage and that is why, despite being from circa middle school, it will always be one of my favorites.

Little did I know that something similar would happen eight years later, only with less successful results. I took some hippie dippie sociology class my sophomore year of college with my friends Ashleigh and Christie to fulfill a Gen-Ed. I completely forget what the class was officially called, mostly because we exclusively referred to it as "Hot Kianda's Class." (RIP) (Side note: I appreciate that even The Washington Post article about his death makes a point to mention that he was "handsome and scholarly." Because I said god damn; yes he was.)

One day Hot Kianda made our class go to a symposium about I-don't-remember-what-but-it-probably-involved-race-class-and-gender-because-I'm-sure-at-least-two-of-those-were-in-the-class-title-because-it's-AU at Howard University. Now, I'm going to be honest with you—sociology doesn't interest me at all. I appreciate that it interests other people, I applaud those people, but to me, sociology is about as interesting as a box of hair. Truthfully, probably less interesting. Thus during said symposium, I kind of just sat in the back, zoned out and listened to the Howard gospel choir rehearse in the auditorium next door. I figured when all of the (many) speakers were done, that would be that and the symposium would be over. Incorrect.

After that we were placed into groups for a group dialogue about...race, class, gender-y...things. To make matters even worse, I was the only person from AU in my group. I was the AU representative in a group of Howard and GW sociology majors and grad students, which should have frightened the shit out of the AU Sociology Department. To make matters even worse still, we had to go around the group and share what constitutional amendment we thought had the most social impact on race, class gender, race, class, gender, jargon, jargon blah.

I was fucked. I couldn't even name a (non-Prohibition related) constitutional amendment, nevertheless one that had to do with whatever the fuck we were talking about. As we went around the circle, my heart started pounding, I began sweating profusely and I couldn't breathe. I had no idea what to say. As the person next to me began speaking, all I could think to say when it was my turn was, "I'M SO SORRY, I'M AN ART MAJOR AND I'M TAKING THIS CLASS AS A GEN-ED AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK ANY OF YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE I DON'T DO ANY OF THE READING AND I JUST STARE AT KIANDA'S ASS DURING CLASS AND WONDER IF YOU COULD BOUNCE A QUARTER OFF IT AND THE IRRITATING THING IS I'LL STILL END UP GETTING AN A IN THIS CLASS BECAUSE IN DESPERATION I'M GOING TO GOOGLE THE TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM QUESTIONS AND THE ANSWERS WILL ALL BE ON LINE AND IT'S NOT MY FAULT FOR DISCOVERING THAT. IT'S NOT. MY. FAULT!!!!"

But I couldn't say that. So in the micro-seconds between someone telling me it was my turn and me opening my mouth to speak, my options boiled down to:

1.) Go the "WWMD (What Would Markita Do?)" route and rap my way out of it. Which, given my audience, seemed like a grossly inappropriate thing to do at the time.

or 2.) Slaves. Just say, "Slaves." Slavery was legal, then it wasn't, a constitutional amendment made that happen, race was involved, just say "Slaves," hope they think you're high and move on.

By the time I opened my mouth and got "S—" out, the proctor interrupted and announced that time had run out and we had to move on. Everyone in my group apologized that I didn't get a chance to share, I vomited in my mouth slightly, shook like a leaf the entire metro ride home and that was that. Fucking Gen-Eds...

Although, I should say, that class was completely worth taking and not just because of Hot Kianda. You know that token dick in your class who always has something to say about everything and is a pompous asshole and spells "color" as "colour" and you just want to set them on fire? Well, that person in Hot Kianda's class was this god awful girl who I obviously couldn't stand. As she got ready to give her final presentation towards the end of the semester, she plugged her laptop into the projector and gave the class a bit of a warning:

"I just want to say before I turn on my computer that a friend pulled a prank on me and made a gross picture pop up on the screen every time I start my computer or wake it from sleep mode and I don't know the password to change it. I apologize and thank you." Click.

And that's when a giant picture of a naked girl sucking off a very well endowed donkey popped up on the 10-foot wall of one of the giant lecture halls in the basement of Ward and stayed there for about eight seconds, while Bitchface had to stand next to it in shame and Kianda got so flustered that he walked out of the classroom all together. And it was the most magical moment of my life up until that point.

It was trumped, however, two years later when through a series of technological fails, my meeky Costume Design professor was forced to ditch his work computer and plug in his personal laptop into the projector. As he searched the folders on his desktop for whatever it was he wanted to show us, some kid raised their hand and pointed out (and I swear to Christ this is all true) that one of the folders on his desktop was named "Hot Cunts". Incredibly flustered, our professor clicked the name of the file and mashed the keyboard with his fist to rename it anything. PER CHANCE, in doing so, he had renamed the file "JIHAD".

"Sir, now it says, JIHAD!"

...Projector mishaps are amazing. Thank god I believe in technology.

Middle School: Maybe It Wasn't As Bad As We All Remember

Full disclosure: I’m a little drunk, a little pissed off, pretty sad, and avoiding writing a paper about Roman sexuality. Skipping the “drunk” and “pissed off” as my natural state, I’m still sad because Rue McClanahan died. I feel like each Golden Girl death hits me harder. Estelle Getty was suffering and I could be glad she was at peace. Bea Arthur was so sudden it was more shock than grief, and I had friends around me to comfort me. Now Rue McClanahan is gone, so soon on the heels of Dixie Carter, and I am alone and drunk in my crappy Philadelphia apartment. I may not survive Betty White’s passing, and I’m gonna level with you: I don’t really want to.

I literally could not finish Meg’s middle school playlist. I was awash in feelings by about the fifth song, although “Your Woman” is a college memories song for me so that kind of tipped the scales. Some day when I’m reeeaaaal drunk and think I can slip it by Meg, I’ll put together a “Tulane Chris Feelings Playlist.” (Mostly Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen, except every third song is “Walkin’ On Sunshine.”)

I hate to admit defeat. I once turned in an entire semester of classwork in four days after the semester ended. (Result: B-minus and a bachelor’s.) When someone broke up with me via text message, I referred to it as a “setback.” (Result: he tearfully asked me back.) I drove my next-to-last car until it stopped on the highway. (Result: I lost my job because I couldn’t get to work without the car and wound up washing dishes in an Arab café until I couldn’t stand it any more and faked a back injury so I could quit without having to confront anyone.) Refusing to admit defeat doesn’t always work, but at least your tombstone will read “he tried.” When King Milan of Serbia was assassinated, he survived being shot and stabbed, so they tried to throw him off the balcony. He grabbed the rail and only let go when they cut off his fingers. That’s what I call hanging in there. (Get it? He was hanging there!)

So was middle school that bad? Well, yes, obviously. I was oily and smelled weird. I could still have blended in with my peers if I’d tried, but I had a “colorful” (read: weird) personality and did things like faked a British accent for a semester. I wasn’t new, so it wasn’t like I had a prayer of successfully pretending to be the Duke of Pigshit-on-Thames, I was just weird. I was in the school orchestra (upright bass, of all things) and wore Jncos. On purpose. (I would kill to be able to go back in time and not give those to Goodwill.) I also had a “medical issue” during seventh grade so I just kind of… wasn’t there for most of it.

But, see, I hate to admit defeat. Were those three years of my life really as humiliating and pointless as they seemed? Surely not. Surely I learned something. I just sat here for three minutes trying to think of things I learned in middle school and literally I think I only learned a few words of Spanish, how to read bass clef, and that I didn’t like girls the way everyone else seemed to. I was in an “experimental” math program where we “taught each other,” which means that me and the other “smart kids” who went to that school all think x – sin(x) = DICKS LOL.

So what did I get? What was the silver lining? Here’s what I’ve come up with:

MTV played music videos back then: I am an incredibly nervous person, which isn’t surprising considering my genetics and upbringing. Some Scots all married each other, then the English chased them away. They went to the South and all married each other until the Yankees drove them away. They went to West Texas and married each other until the highways were built and my mother could move away. (My dad is the same story but Irish.) I have the same overbred qualities as a prize-winning whippet: same even, pointy face; same bony front legs and strong back legs; same bursts of energy between frequent naps; same constant nervousness. Because of this nervousness, I have to have ambient noise on all the time. The TV or the radio or the fan or an air-raid siren or something has to be on, because if it’s too quiet it makes me more nervous. MTV used to be perfect for this. Music videos would play and you could kind of look at them without having to watch them, but there was always sound. Then a VJ would cut in and say something boring in a pleasant TV voice, then more music. It was balm.

You Were Still Kind of Blind to Your Parents’ Failings: On some level I understood that my home life was unhealthy, but as long as one of my parents bought me and my friends pizza and would let us rent R-rated movies, I did NOT care.

Porn Was A Lot More Low-Tech and Thus You Were More Grateful: Everyone born between 1982 and 1987 remembers clicking on the thumbnail and waaaaaaiiiiiiting…. And here a stripe, there a stripe, and graaaaaadually…. I appreciated that one image more when it arrived than the THOUSANDS of HOURS of pornography I could theoretically download in the next twenty minutes. The other kind of porn our generation had was pausing an R-rated movie just right. You remember. “Okay…. Now!M” Damn. Rewind it like 5 seconds. Okayyyyyy….. Now! Damn.”

It’s Not Like You Had to Pay the Gas Bill: Admit. You didn’t generally have to give a fuck about bills.

Puberty Metabolism: Every single day in middle school, I had either: a chicken burger, fries, and Hawaiian Punch, or a bag of Andy Capp Cheez Fries, Reese’s Cups, and Hawaiian Punch and yet I was thin until I moved to New Zealand in my twenties and spent most of a year eating only curry and beer.

It’s Not Like It Counts: If something sucked in middle school you could just say, “Well, this isn’t real life. I’m not a grown-up yet. It’s okay. I’ll still grow up and do great things.” I am 25 years old. I have a credit score. Things I do count.

I look back on the advantages of middle school I’ve tried to accumulate and I see that it’s mainly inbreeding, immaturity, and masturbation. Well, whatever. Having someone else pay the bills while you jack off sounds like a damn fine deal to me.

Reading this post might give you a panic attack and get you fired. Proceed at your own risk.

My newest obsessions as of late are the following:

1.) Kevin Yang. But that's kind of a given. (Side note: I got a text message from Ruby last night in which she called me "the Yang of her life." I can honestly say that in my 25 years of living, I have never received a compliment that made me feel as complete and whole as that one did. Do with that what you will.)

(Also, while on the phone with Tulane Chris tonight, he asked me, "Meg, can you at some point take a picture of a naked Asian guy and use Kevin Yang heads to censor his nipples and junk?" Yes Chris. Yes, I can.

Oh. NSFW, by the way.)

2.) Kerning the invitation for my sister's bachelorette weekend in Miami. Stop it, Meg. Just stop. It looks fine. Print. Assemble. Send. Move on with your life. Because I could do this indefinitely. I wish I were kidding when I say that I've spent at least two hours every night, for the past four nights (and yes that spans over a weekend...) sitting in front of my computer, obsessively kerning this god damn invitation. And the thing is, I'm completely aware that nobody else is going to notice if the space between the L and the A in our last name is expertly distanced (and it is), the reason I kern it over and over again because it feels good. I have a physical reaction to kerning letters. It's just so god damn satisfying. The reason for me doing this project has moved past wanting to do something nice for my sister and dangerously into "Hi, I'm sexually attracted to typesetting" territory. And I don't know what to tell you about it. Some 25 year old girls have sex, I have kerning and Kevin Yang jokes. This is a night of bold statements.

(WOW. Sorry to self-interrupt, but I have to share: I seriously just thought to myself, "Man, wouldn't it be totally awesome if there was a job where you just sit there and kern shit all day?!" Uh, hi. That's a petrifying statement. Because not only is there a job that is exactly that, I had it. Remember that pesky year when you were a layout artist at a magazine in New York, Meggles? And remember how every day that you didn't attempt to flush yourself down the toilet to escape and swim free with the dolphins was a personal victory? Tighten the cilice on your leg and go meditate in your room for five hours for ever wishing that situation back upon yourself.) (Yes ma'am.)

3.) Reminiscing about Middle School. I swear to Christ, I really have let middle school go. I don't know what I can do to convince you that I don't sit here all day wearing stove-pipe jeans and baby tees staring at myself in a mirror saying affirmations. I've moved on. It's just that things keep coming up that remind me of middle school and what am I supposed to do? Not freak out about it? Please. Although I do appreciate the fact that I got an email last week from a reader who I went to middle school with apologizing for being friends with Dana P of My Top 5 All-Time Grudges fame and asking me not to spit on the tote bag she had just ordered from the merch store. (Dana P who, by the way, still hasn't apologized to me. Your best friend follows the blog on Twitter. I know you know what's up. And now you know I know you know. Make it right. I was just at a bar this weekend talking to some people from high school and Jessica P, also of My Top 5 All-Time Grudges fame, came up and guess what? I had her back and was singing her praises all night! Did you ever think you'd live to see the day?? I sure as shit didn't. But she made it right with me and that's how it works. You know where to reach me.

meg@2birds1blog.com.) And don't worry, kind reader. I won't spit on your tote bag. Although I do remember being sufficiently jealous of your hair in middle school. But I've let it go! I swears!

That all being said...I did dwell on middle school for a mighty long time yesterday afternoon. But again, it totally wasn't my fault! Helena came over and I put my iTunes on shuffle for some background noise and guess what came up first? The Fly's "Got You Where I Want You." I don't know who set my iTunes to traumatized, but yet again was transported right back to middle school, a la White Town's "Your Woman."

I joked that we should just make a playlist of all the songs that remind us of middle school and 20 seconds later I had a pen and paper in my hand and this list was born. So without further ado, I give you Meg & Helena's Traumatizing Middle School Music Playlist.

- The Flys, "Got You Where I Want You"

OK, Helena didn't remember this song, but I absolutely do. Specifically, I remember that it was really big the summer after sixth grade and Katie Holmes was in the video pushing people off a cliff because it was the single for Teaching Mrs. Tingle. And everything I just said makes me want to vomit.

- White Town, "Your Woman"

Ooof.

- Marcy Playground, "Sex and Candy"

Remember how this video was always on Pop-Up Video? I do. Mostly because every day after school I'd get off the bus, waddle home and proceed to stuff my face with Chips Ahoy! and watch Vh1 for hours on end. Fatty foods and the adult contemporary music channel—sounds about right. I also had the biggest crush on this kid named Whit Ladue in 7th grade and I thought he looked like Marcy Playground's lead singer, so this song will also always make me think of him. His full name was "Ronald Whitney Ladue." Fatty foods, the adult contemporary music channel and a crush on Ronald Whitney Ladue. Oh Meglet. You didn't stand a chance.

- Paula Cole, "Where Have all the Cowboys Gone?"

Shudder, shudder. This song takes me back to such an oddly specific moment. Picture it: 6th grade. A Sunday night in January. I was watching Misery on TBS, eating a bowl of tomato soup and being generally anxious about going to school the next day. When Misery was over, I switched over to Vh1 and I so vividly remember sitting there watching this video while I psyched myself up to ask my mom if I could stay home the next day. I feel physically sick whenever I hear this song because of it. Or watch Misery. (Oh and she said no, by the way. Because if she said yes every time I asked her if I could stay home from school, I'd probably be illiterate right now.)

- Garbage, "Special"

This song will forever remind me of having the stomach flu during the Great Ice Storm of '96. I was so fucking sick and our power went out, so I spent the entire weekend curled up on the couch being nauseous and freezing while listening to a battery operated radio, and "Special" was always playing on HFS because it was the hot jam of the moment. Likewise I couldn't eat Boboli pizza after that weekend because it was primarily what I threw up the first night I got sick. Memories!

- Lit, "Miserable"

Am I douchebag for still thinking this song is kind of good? (Answer: a resounding yes.)

- Lit, "My Own Worst Enemy"

Oh yeah. Summer after 6th grade. Hanging out at Teresa's house for weeks on end and playing on her WebTV because it was like, the most mind-boggling piece of technology I had ever seen. BOOM!

- Shawn Colvin, "Sunny Came Home"

Helena hit it out of the fucking park with this one.

- Jewel, "Foolish Games"

I mean, really anything Jewel has ever done ever reminds me of middle school. "Foolish Games" specifically reminds me of going to Old Navy for the first time in 1996 when one opened up on Rockville Pike and thinking that store was the trendiest thing since sliced Airwalks.

- Cardigans, "Lovefool"

Remember when the Cardigans were on 90210? They were the band that played After Prom at the Peach Pit and I distinctly remember after they finished "Lovefool," the lead singer chick got on the mic and said, "Hey, Peach Pit After Dark! We don't normally do gigs like this, but how could I say no to my old friend Nat?" or some shit like that. That was really irritating. Because if you're going to be the band who makes an appearance on 90210, own it, you know?

- No Doubt, "Don't Speak"

This doesn't have anything to do with middle school, but "Don't Speak" makes me think of "Spiderwebs" which makes me think of the time in 9th grade when I got my first AIM account and put up "Sorry I'm not home right now, I'm walking in the spiderwebs, so leave a message and I'll call you back!" as my away message and thought I was so clever until my crush IM'ed me with four simple words: "Wow. You're a fag." I swear to all that's good and holy, that's what he IM'ed me. "Wow. You're a fag." I came back and saw that he'd messaged me and was like, "tee-hee-hahaha he saw how unbelievably witty I am and now I bet he wants to suck face!" And then I clicked on his message and saw, "Wow. You're a fag." Crestfallen. I ultimately got my revenge a few months later though when he tried to hook up with me in my parent's basement while we watched Almost Famous and I shot him down. That'll teach you to disrespect my clever No Doubt based jokes, asshole.

- Eve 6, "Here's to the Night"

Oh man, this reminds me of going to my first real co-ed party. It was a party with all the kids I went to camp with the summer after sixth grade and I asked Becca for advice on what I should wear. She looked up and down at what I was wearing (khaki shorts and a sleeveless button-up oxford shirt with a brown ribbon that I had tied around the collar and into a bow) and I swear to god said to me, "Well first things first—stop dressing like The Colonel." Looking back, that's probably one of the funniest things anyone has ever said to me in my entire life. Ultimately she let me borrow one of her outfits for the night—a white baby-tee with a blue ADIDAS logo on it, bright orange corduroy shorts and a pair of Tevas. I still don't think I've walked into a party feeling as confident as I did that night. I want to be buried in that outfit

- Weezer, "Undone (The Sweater Song)"

I think this is still one of my dad's favorite songs, which warms my heart.

- Soundgarden, "Black Hole Sun"

This reminds me of that one week in '97 when Becca was really angsty and wore a lot of hemp necklaces and silver jewelry. But then again, I was probably dressed like a southern gentleman hawking fried chicken that week, so you know, glass houses.

- Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "Impression That I Get"

- Reel Big Fish, "Sell Out"

I certainly wouldn't hate a ska revival...

- Jamiroquai, "Virtual Insanity"

I definitely first saw this video during one of my late-afternoon Chips Ahoy!/Vh1 binges and it blew my mind.

- Chumbawamba, "Tubthumping"

I'm kind of impressed that I still know every single lyric to this song. And I'm really fighting an incredible urge to go find a karaoke bar to sing it at as soon as humanly possible...

- Aaliyah, "Are You that Somebody?"

Three words: Bat Mitzvah season.

- Len, "Steal My Sunshine"

I'm just gonna put this out there: this is still one of my favorite songs. I'd call it a guilty pleasure, but I don't feel guilty. It makes me want to do E and drive around the boardwalk on a moped. Ain't nothin' wrong with that.

- Christina Aguilera, "Genie in a Bottle"

Meagan Hume, this song reminds me of the summer you came with my family to Deep Creek Lake. I remember being really into it and staying up all night girlishly giggling about Richie Rosenberg. All. Sorts. Of. LOLZ.

- Britney Spears, "...One More Time"

This reminds me of our 8th grade class trip to New York City. And whoever invented the middle school class trip was a real asshole.

- Wallflowers, "One Headlight"

I'm sorry, but Jakob Dylan is still all different kinds of sexy. Have you seen that CD of his that's always on sale in Starbucks? Me-ow.

- Deep Blue Something, "Breakfast at Tiffany's"

Yet another song that transports me back to an oddly specific moment: sitting in the back of Teresa's mom's Tercel en route to the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair to race our hermit crabs. You can take the girl outta Maryland...

- Semisonic, "Closing Time"

This was Becca's high school graduation song in '97 and I'm totally jealous of it. Ours was "Lean On Me" which is bullshit because it's timeless and lame. I wish we had something equally indicative of 2003, like Fat Joe's "Get it Poppin'" or something. So unfair...

- Savage Garden, "I Want You"

Helena: "Oooo! Oooo! What was that song with 'CHICKA-CHERRY-COLA?!"

- Hanson, "MMMBop"

This memory is almost so depressing it's not worth sharing. Almost. "MMMBop" will forever remind me of going into my bathroom to puke one morning in sixth grade before school (not because I had an eating disorder, mind you, simply because I was that anxious about going to school) and I turned on this little radio my sister had gotten at Old Navy (FULL CIRCLE!) to cover up, you know, the vomiting sounds and "MMMBop" came on. I remember pausing from vomiting, looking up at the radio and thinking, "Hmm, this song is mighty catchy!" before going back to vomiting. I mean, Christ. It was middle school Meg, not fucking Auschwitz.

- Aqua, "Barbie Girl"

I think this was my ringtone at some point in high school which is retrospectively embarrassing and hilarious.

- OMC, "How Bizarre"

Dude. This used to be me and Teresa's jam. She sent me a postcard from her summer vacation in Ft. Augustine once detailing all of the zany things that had happened on the trip and then put how bizarre at the end and I thought it was like, fucking comedic genius. It's the little things that get me.

- Los Umbrellos, "No Tengo Dinero"

Helena didn't believe me that this was a mid-90's hit, but a quick poll of Twitter revealed that she's crazy, not me. I remember this song got really big when I was taking the Spanish unit in the sixth grade arts rotation and it really chapped my ass because I was all, "NOW WAIT A MINUTE, WAIT A MINUTE, WAIT A MINUTE! 'No tengo' means 'I don't have', so saying 'I got no tengo' is like saying 'I don't have I got no money', which is redundant and grammatically incorrect!" And then I probably puked somewhere returned to tending to my hermit crab.

- Vitamin C, "Graduation (Friends Forever)"

- Everclear, "I Will Buy You a New Life"

Everclear was the band in Loser. We all know how I feel about that movie. I don't want to talk about it.

- Spice Girls, "Wannabe"

This will always remind me of my dad taking me and my sister shopping at Express and buying me wide-legged jeans and grape colored nail polish. I mean, it wasn't a white linen pants suit and a bathtub Mint Julep, so at least I was headed in the right direction.

- The Offspring, "Why Don't You Get a Job?"

- The Offspring, "Pretty Fly For a White Guy"

The Offspring reminds me of watching TRL. God yes.

- Total Eclipse of the Heart (Dance Remix)

This is where the playlist ends because after hearing it, Helena and Laura and I all went to different but equally dark, dark places and had to stop playing this game. Personally, I was reminded of the time I went to my first middle school dance in sixth grade. I was actually enjoying it and feeling pretty good about myself, until I started dancing to this song and Alyssa Kunkel (fuck it, I'm not -schm-ing her name. I hope this is the first thing that comes up in a google search.) brutally made fun of me until I stopped dancing. I went home and told my mom what happened and I can still hear her being like, "WHAT?! HOW DARE SHE! MEGHAN, YOU ARE A WONDERFUL DANCER! WHY DID YOU STOP DANCING?! WHY DID YOU STOP DANCING?!?!" And that's when I looked up and realized that both Helena and Laura were staring at the ground with their eyes glazed-over, reliving their own traumatic first middle school dance experience and this game wasn't fun anymore.

So Jenna and Carla came over and we started drinking. Heavily. Because not being 13 fucking owns.