Last week we said that senior spring is hilariously weird. This week, we were told that we are hilariously weird. We find that hilarious and weird. And so it goes.
The good news is, we have un-superglued ourselves from our futon/bed and we spent the week supergluing other things. We’ll get to that later. But we also did productive stuff like putting out fires, interviewing for real people jobs, ordering books for the term, cursing HBO Go then eating lots of chicken, petting therapy dogs, wearing a crop top, plotting our next hair color/cut and embarking on new adventures.
We have also realized that Drake’s song “Started from the Bottom” could have been written about Madeleine Albright. If not the whole song, then the chorus. She inspires us. Although the “first female Secretary of State” ship has sailed, we hope that one day we too will rise from the bottom and do something cool. For now, this is what our “here” looks like:
Once upon a time we didn’t want to do our homework. So we didn’t. Instead we borrowed a friend’s car, said “okay” when he asked us to be careful with the half-broken key that hung from a lanyard and set off on the open road.
We actually had a destination in mind. We didn’t know how to get there, but we trusted Google Maps for that. It all would’ve worked out okay, too, had we paid any attention to the Google Map. But we didn’t, so we missed our exit on the highway and then drove 18 miles out of our way to correct the mistake.
After a stop at the Quechee Gorge, we asked Google where in Vermont we could buy a pet piglet by Googling “piglets VT.” Our search was futile. We found only farm piglets raised for slaughter, not the type we might raise like a child. Though we didn’t give up hope on the piglet, we turned our attention to the small animal section of the Pet and Aquarium Center in Lebanon. There, Seanie terrified a guinea pig, and Amanda yelled at a rabbit for bullying its penmates. We stayed away from the Roborovski hamsters, as Seanie had received an extremely painful bite from one over spring break, leaving her with a nearly imperceptible scar on her left index finger.
Then we left. Or at least, we tried to leave, until we realized that the half-broken car key had broken all the way. The metal key part separated entirely from the top plastic bit, which now hung from the lanyard, sad and alone. The metal part, our ticket back to campus, was lost somewhere among the animals of the Pet and Aquarium Center.
An exhaustive search yielded no key. A second exhaustive search also yielded no key. The situation was funny, and then it was dire. The third search was tinged with panic of the sort one feels when trapped in a New Hampshire pet shop. We were on our knees crawling beneath the parakeet pen when a shop employee came up to us.
She asked what were looking for — more of a judgmental statement on how pathetic we looked than a question. We told her about the half of a car key we were missing.
She said she had just thrown it away.
As we walked with her over to the garbage can in question, we briefly harbored the hope that she would know where to look, or that the key would be on top or some other lucky situation would arise that didn’t require us to dig with our hands through animal debris. But alas. We picked at the trash delicately before admitting that delicacy would not serve us well here, and then we just went for it. Eventually the key was located, cushioned in a pile of bird feed beneath some questionable pellet-shaped items.
So overcome were we with exhaustion and relief that the only thing to do from there was a victory trip to Ice Cream Fore-U. Victory might have been sweeter had we not had to leave the cash-only ice cream shop to find a bank and pay a $3.75 service charge to take out cash to pay for a $2.50 ice cream. But still. We recommend the Fly Fishing Fudge. It tastes like sweet bliss.
We made it back to campus in more than one piece, but that key situation was soon to be ameliorated. We brought out the big guns. Literally. We acquired a hot glue gun, superglue and tape. And used them all. On first trial in the ignition, the key broke again. We glued and taped more until the key was nearly unidentifiable, at which point it worked better than new, if that’s possible. Much to our luck, the owner found the end result worthy of a chuckle.
Yesterday we checked in with the friend who let us use the car and were informed that the key is holding up “pretty well.” We consider that a victory.
We started at the bottom, stayed there for a while, now we’re here.
We still plan on purchasing a piglet. Unlike our fall plan to purchase a golf cart, this will not fall through. We are accepting donations toward a $4,000 high-quality piglet.
Yours from the middle-ish (but could be on the top with a piglet),
Lucy & Ethel (& future piglet)
