Disenchanted.

Oh, so many reasons to wake up disenheartened and disillusioned this morning. For starters, Austin was OUT of Project Runway on Tuesday. Secondly, I really might be starting to get old. I made a joke about going to the "old people bar" last night, and we arrived to find it filled with our friends. If your friends are old, you might be old. And...I'm so happy to realize...I'm the oldest one of them all.

It's the fact that the old people bar, where we can TALK to each other while we drink top shelf alcohol, is more fun the the young people bar, where you dance and make flirtatious eye contact while trying not to consume too much $2/pitcher beer, is what really makes me realize I'm further up the slow slide to old than I thought I was.

All this is simply an avoidance tactic before I get to the real deal. I am really more than just disenchanted right now. I'm, well, down right disgusted, and that's saying something. See, I attend a large, very selective Catholic university (The Catholic part had nothing to do with my selection, the best program JUST HAPPENS to be here). This, in a non-bizarro universe, should mean that the undergrads should be just a cut above your average 19 year old. They should be a little smarter, they should be a little nicer, they should be a little more determined. While the grad students are...lets say less than 20% Catholic...the undergrads are 90% Catholic. Shouldn't they have SOME SORT of moral code in place? While I was raised by a Protestant minister, I do have a FEELING that Catholics read the same or a similar Bible.

Ah, the naivité. They're little hellions. Morally reprehensible. (With the exception of the kids in my Latin class. How can you study Latin and not retain total dignity?) I can't stand the daily walk between rows of these "cut above" students, twittering on about clothes, shoes, number of shots consumed, and who's roomate didn't come home and was last seen with a football player. The fact that I derisively call them all children makes it quite obvious, yes, that I am old.

But let's get to why I'm REALLY offended. Yesterday I was walking to class, and there was sudden congestion on the sidewalk. There were red flyers everywhere. It turns out there were about 30 people dressed in black, with their mouths taped shut, handing out flyers to protest the silence about sexual assault against women. You know what those morally reprehensible little jerks did? Most of them threw the flyers on the ground after reading the first few words "1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime." They called it bullshit. They laughed.

Perhaps I should mention that I just graduated from Mount Holyoke College. Yeah, a women's college. Yeah, a liberal arts college. Yeah, liberal in general. One of the top five most diverse campuses, top five most accepting of race sex orientation. When February comes around and it's time to celebrate African-American heritage and to protest the treatment of women, we really go to town. So this is a bit odd (and that's an understatement) to me.

Last night my girlfriends and I went to the amateur comedy night on campus. We had a few laughs. Very few laughs. Most of the comics were down right disgusting and completely offensive to women. Literally stuff you don't even hear on HBO comedy specials. Because people know they can't get away with that stuff, even on cable. It's degrading and, well, morally reprehensible! And you know what the audience does? Laughs. Guffaws. Even the women.
They have so much to learn.

Simply because I feel the need to end this all on a lighter turn, so I don't depress myself too much and turn to the chocolate cupcakes, I will tell you the end of the tale. My friends and I left before the entire comedy hour was over, and went to the lobby to cool down. When the show broke, the comedians came out into the lobby. Two maxi-pads just happened to fall out of Ms. S.' pocket. We picked them up, and I got the brilliant idea to put them to good use. So we pulled the "excuse me, passing through" trick, and stuck them to the worst offenders back. And ran off giggling to watch his reaction from afar :)

This is why there is hope for me yet. If I can still get fulfillment out of acting like a 12 year old, I may not be so old yet. I'm still disenchanted, though.