I’ve mentioned my friend Eadie a few times and I feel it is time she got a bit more airtime. I met her this summer while we were both working at Life Club in Rimini, Italy. She is 20 years old, drinks a minimum of two cups of tea a day, reads all the time (including when she is drunk), has traveled to something like 25 countries and is completely hilarious. Throw in the fact that she has a British accent, therefore she sounds polite even if she is yelling “WANKER!” and you can imagine why I keep in touch. On a side note, I am going to help ring in her 21st birthday American style – aka marking drinks on the arm and drinking all day – even though in the UK she has been able to drink legally for 3 years now. Everybody needs a good American 21st right? I’ll recap that story beginning of January :)
But this post is about her first few months as a sophomore at Uni (that’s what the Brits call college). I will include some of her own words so you can get the British tone that I just cannot replicate. For all of you who are recent college grads, I think these stories will make you smile and remember the good ole days. You know, the ones when tequila shots didn’t guarantee a two-day hangover.
Let’s start at the beginning. She lives in a house with something like 4 or 5 roommates, including gasp her ex-boyfriend. I’ll call him Rupert because that sounds distinctly British. The group of friends signed the house lease before the break up, and because Eadie is so mature and over Rupert, nobody bothered to deal with a change of address. I asked her a few times this summer how she felt about the situation, and she was fairly confident everything would be fine. He is dating a new girl now (well there is a story behind that as well which is completely worthy of a Gossip Girl episode if Gossip Girl was about broke college kids) and she has made out with an American soldier, so obviously she realizes how mediocre Rupert really is. Point of all this is that they live together and the semester began totally normal, albeit with a little less conversation between those two roommates. This is a long intro for the short anecdote I’ll share here, but I’m sure there will be more to come as they are going to live together for a solid year.
She came home from class and was starving. For everyone who has met Eadie, this is not shocking. The only time I saw her stop eating was when she was stuck with all us Americans and she decided that our food was terrible. For those of you who don’t know, Brits eat beans on toast for breakfast – I’d rather eat my Cheerios, but whatever. So she is starving and makes some pasta and a piece of garlic bread. But the garlic bread is actually Rupert’s. For those of you who have had roommates, let me explain it that it was not his last piece and she did leave a note that she took it. That is good stealing food etiquette, is it not? Well anyway, the next day she comes home from class and is met with a nice surprise. He has opened one of her tins of pineapple chunks and dumped the contents into the sink. Retribution for the piece of garlic bread. Completely normal reaction right? NOT. Welcome to living with a 20 year old ex-boyfriend. They are bad enough at 25, but I think they have the emotional age of 14 at age 20.
So moving on to her next escapade. I’ll post this in her own words because I want to do it justice:
So I went out last night with everyone I know and got wasted (on the club on a boat that u might have seen on the original Skins!) and somehow (memory hazy) hooked up with a FRESHER- young meat! It gets funnier. So we went back to his and did the deed- but beforehand the two guys I live with who aren’t Rupert both called, one after another, to check that I was ok! Anyhoo, after that all this guys fresher friends came in and we watched loads of peep shows and his friend slept on the floor! Weirdest one night stand ever right?
The next morning is where the true hilarity lies. So I woke up like an hour before him and couldn’t remember his name! So I looked for clues. I think it might be Paul? Anyway, in the end I had to wake up Possible Paul and ask where we were so that I could get home! I spent the hour up to that really hoping it was the halls in the town centre- and it was! Unfortunately this meant that although I knew where I was, I had to do my walk of shame through 10am Saturday shopping rush hour across the city centre. And oh yeah, I couldn’t find my tights, so I was wearing quite literally the smallest dress ever and high heels! Cars kept honking and people leaned out the windows asking how my night was! LOLTASTIC.
I must point out that Marisa had an adventure like this in college. Only she did remember his name, but had no clue to where she was. Eventually she found an address on a piece of the guy’s mail and called Paige for a ride to avoid the walk of shame. I also had a friend – could it be Marisa again? my memory is hazy from those sorority days – who woke up from a one night stand to discover the guy’s mom had decided to surprise him and take him out to breakfast. But let’s not get started on those stories – they could fill a book on their own.
One last Eadie story to leave with you tonight. She met a guy at a Halloween party and went on a date with him last week. She wore a Batman outfit that she described as, “think Lindsay Lohan at that party in Mean Girls in terms of how sexy I was looking,” and he was dressed as the Incredible Hulk. I thought it was very cute that the two superheroes met each other, but when I consulted my resident Batman expert he said that in real life that would never ever happen. Of course in real life Batman and the Incredible Hulk don’t exist, but whatever, we’ll let that one go right now. They had a great date; they met up at a bar and ended up chatting for 5 hours! Guess what one of his perks is? He is 25 and therefore does not live in abject student poverty. Too bad that in the U.S. 25 year olds are still living in abject poverty due to student loans.
I hope these stories got everyone out of their Monday funk. Oh, to be 20 again. When I was 20 I was living in my sorority house and my biggest worry was if I could register for the courses I wanted. I didn’t know that the guy I was dating would break my heart, or that I would never use my major. I took those tequila shots and ate Qdoba at 3am. Remember the days before you knew what “slow metabolism” really meant? I love listening to Eadie’s stories as they bring me back to those carefree years and I thought it was only fair that I share them with all of you.
