My Year In The Dorm

The year 1990 was a major turning point in my life. I had dropped out of high school supposedly to home school, yeah right. As you can imagine things weren't going so well, so my poor parents finally threw up their hands in defeat and sent me to HS to finish out my high school years in the dorm. As most of you know that only lasted for a year before they decided that they couldn't do without my wonderful presence in their lives and moved down to be with me.
That same year my dear friend Julia's parents decided to do the same thing. Such a duo has never been inflicted on the dorm since. As you will learn we weren't really bad, just really mischievous.
The death of Mrs. A this past week has had me doing a lot of reminiscing. Sometimes you don't realize just what an important part a person played in your life until years later. The one incident that stands out in my mind portraying her character and love happened about half way through the school year. There were only seven high school students in the dorm that year, and most were a little on the wild side. That's excluding Bethlehem and Yodit who were perfect. There came a night when some young men came calling and all the other high schoolers snuck out the laundry room window and headed for the beach. Mr. A somehow found out and headed down to the beach to retrieve the wayward ones. The next few days in the dorm were very somber as two were expelled and one was pretty much dormed for the rest of the year. Suffice it to say Mrs. A was very busy with lots on her mind, so imagine mine and Julia's surprise to each receive a card in our mailboxes from Mr. Steve A and Mrs Marilyn A. It was just a very simple little thank you for not giving in to pier pressure and encouraging us to keep heading in the right direction. It still means so much to me to realize that she knew the power of positive reinforcement and took the time to write a card that I've never forgotten.
All of that being said, I must tell you that we were not perfect angels. We pretty much terrorized the dorm that year. One day at the beginning of the year Mr. M was working on some maintenance project, Christy (another high schooler) asked if we could borrow his golf cart. For some reason he said "yes", so we all three piled on and went for a wild ride around the north parking lot of the dorm. If you can imagine a golf cart doing doughnuts, go ahead cause we had that poor thing rockin'. It wasn't long before Mrs. A appeared in the doorway. She very calmly said "Girls, FEA just called, they're all standing at their window watching you" I think maybe she rather enjoyed informing us of our audience. In great humiliation we climbed off and went back in dorm, out of sight.
The poor Taiwanese girls became some of our main objects of torment. We truly loved them, but they were so easy to tease. The main issue was that their bodies had not adjusted to our time yet, so at 3am they came alive. They would also never go barefoot, they always wore flip flops. So every morning around 3 they would go clopping or shuffling past our doors, and seeing that we had only been in bed for about an hour ourselves this became almost more than we could handle. One night we had had enough, so armed with hairdryers we went to the door of everyone who wore flip flops and demanded that they hand them over. We spouted off a line about how our hairdryers got much hotter than most and would literally burn your skin off. For some reason no one balked us and we ended up with every pair, and that's a lot of flip flops. Not knowing what to do with them once we had them we took them back to A hall and hung them on the wall with a sign that said "International Shoe Sale". By the time we were done it was time for us to go to bed, so we left the mess for Mrs. A to find when she came in the next morning. She was rightfully horrified by our actions and told us that we had to return every single pair. The problem was, that we had no idea what pair went to who. There may still be flip flops floating around with no rightful owner.
During study hall pretty much everyone studied but us. We found it much more amusing to go out into the courtyard and stare in people's windows. Since we had no air conditioners, every window was open wide. We would just stand there very quietly until the person felt someone staring at them, looked at the window and gave us the reaction we were waiting for. There are probably grown women still on nerve medication to this day due to our demented senses of humor. My favorite is night Julia was on her way back from some practice. Seeing an open window she went over and made a strange guttural sound. Thinking no more about it she went on her way. A few minutes later when she entered the dorm she found the poor occupant of the room sobbing in the lobby with the Assistant Dean praying for her. Upon asking what was wrong Julia was informed that a "devil" had just appeared outside the girl's room. We quit window watching after that, we decided it was better to "Do unto others".
On rainy evenings our favorite past time was truth or dare. We mostly did dares as a way to get some exercise. The main routine was to run to the end of the sidewalk with a towel around your neck and yell something ridiculous in the direction of the boy's dorm. I'll never forget the night when I opened the door to the Ad Building, completely soaked from head to toe, and yelled "The British are coming, the British are coming". Poor Darlene B. might still be partially frozen in fright.
We both got so many red tags that we were dormed for a short period of time. We had to have our rooms spotless in order to leave. This included not going to the cafeteria, which we ended up enjoying because the college girls, who thought they were so much older and wiser, felt sorry for us and piled our plates full. We ate really good for those few days. Mrs. A, being a stickler for cleanliness went so far as to have us paged at the end of the school day. Every one's standing at their lockers when over the loud speaker comes , "Julia I. and Kayla L. report immediately to the girl's dorm". That did it for us, we got our rooms cleaned up.
I'm glad to say that we have both done a lot of growing up and maturing. I still have a mischievous streak, but have learned to keep it under control. (Most of the time) Please keep both of our husbands in your prayers as they endeavor to deal with us.