I promised you a story...

And now I must fulfill that promise. Shall I entertain myself - and the poor person who clicks on Next Blog - by writing it as a screenplay?

INT. FIDDLER'S HEARTH, A COZY IRISH PUB IN NOWHERE, MIDWEST. NIGHTTIME.

Scene begins as our hapless grad student enters, fashionably late. She sidles up to the table and is greeted by two friends, two strangers, and one weirdo. Greetings are had all around.

Our grad student orders a beer - because the bottle looked cool - and settles into the middle of a philosopical conversation. The friends, students of English literature, were entertaining the others with baudy poems from "The Essential Wordsworth."

MS. M
Ooh, ooh, read Nutting!

MS. S
Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
Of devastation; but the hazels rose
Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung,
A virgin scene! (continues)

GRAD GIRL
Hmmm...that's really...what is that thing with
all the penises?

A resounding cry of "PHALLIC!!" comes from the other grad students at the table. MS. S. continues to read, but our grad student begins to fade slowly away from the conversation into her beer.

GRAD GIRL
(voice over)
I began to think I might be entirely too rowdy
for the likes of this bar on this night...I realized
couldn't help but cause some trouble...


WOW. While I find this extremely entertaining I suddenly realized it would take me until next Tuesday to finish off even the first ten minutes of shenanigans in screenplay form. I'll spare myself, my piling homework, and my loyal fan and cut to the rest of the evening:

So the whole point of the evening was that is was the eve of "William Had A Headache Day" - wait for it, wait for it - a holiday which I am now proudly commited to commemorating. Apparently, according to Ms. M and Ms. S and the English lit experts they are, Dorothy Wordsworth - the emminent poet's sister - kept a journal of her brother's exploits. Fascinatingly enough, on Jan. 31 1802 she records that William "slept ill, and had a heachache all day" (no, I am not to be bothered to find out what she actually wrote and cite properly). Therefore, the holiday involves drinking excessively in order to create a similarly uncomfortable day afterwards. Oh, and the aforementioned recitations of his poems.

Unfortunately for the memory of dear Mr. Wordsworth, the evening degenerated quickly. For an unknown reason, I found myself declaring ad vocem - ad LOUD AS ALL GET OUT vocem - the hotness of a particular manboy we believed to be an Irish musician. After the third time said manboy gave Ms. S the once over, I began a merciless campaign to bring them together. Which mostly consisted of using excuses for us to walk past him and blatantly pointing at him and talking.

You can imagine the joy experienced by all our male companions as we three ladies discussed the merits of manboy's hotness. And their mortified faces when I couldn't stand it any longer and just went and talked to the guy. See, Ms. S. made the mistake of saying that if I brought him over that she would talk to him, but she did not believe I would really do it. Ahh, how underestimated is the power of disbelieving me!

Unfortunately while we chatted with the lovely - apparently Canadian not Irish and apparently dancer not musician - manboy, Ms. M. was accosted by one of our table mates. No, no, he didn't accost her in that way. He commited the social faux pas of asking-out-a-girl-in-a-really-cheesy-way-in-front-of-other-people. Ms. M. tried to wade her way through the Swamps of Polite Rejection but we, of course, had to spend the next two hours at Steak and Shake hashing out what she coulda woulda shoulda said. The jury is still out on whether or not he got the multiple glaring hints, or if she needs to use the "before we go any further, you should know I'm transferring to University of Georgia (the country) next week" excuse.

All in all, much fun was had, and though the late night food run meant we DID sleep ill, I don't think any of us had an actual headache. Next year.