As Rebellious As I've Ever Been

 Robbie, Rachel, Adam, Me and Erin

In preparation for Women's Conference at BYU (a week from today!!!), I've been perusing the schedule.  There's a lot of considering involved.  Which classes are my sisters going to? (Because that's kind of the point.) Do I know any of the presenters?  Where are the classes?  Are the stairs to the Smith Field House involved?  Things like that.

Olivia pointed out to me that a Certain Former Resident Assistant (CFRA) was teaching a class.

Um.  No, I won't be going to that class.  We didn't exactly like each other.  She thought I was a naughty naughty girl when I was a freshman at BYU.

I should tell you that I'm not really one to live on the edge.  I've never been in much trouble and mostly because I'm not very brave or adventurous.  My dad told me one time that he had only to get mad at Marianne and it would make me cry when we were little girls.  (I still cry when someone mistreats my sister.)  Both of my sisters got suspended for skipping school.  Olivia did for fighting in the hall too. 

I'm really sort of boring.

But at the end of my freshman year, the head resident in my dorm told Marianne (who she adored...shocking, I know) that every year there was a "challenge" in the dorm.  And that year it had been me.  And my roommate Erin.

Here's why.

My life of crime.

The first day of school CFRA found Erin pounding a nail into the wall with the heel of her shoe.

Bad. Bad. Bad!  We were supposed to use plastitak from the bookstore.  The gauntlet had been thrown down.  CFRA was watching us.

We lived on the first floor.  We also lived smack dab in the center of the first floor.  On our floor, every night, I think around 10:00, there was "floor prayer".  Whoever wanted to would congregate in the middle of the hall (outside our room) and pray together.  I went sometimes.  But not always.  I have nothing against prayer but sometimes I was studying, or not.

Sometimes Adam and Robbie were at our window.

When the girls in our hall were merrily rapping on each door to announce, "Floor prayer,"  knock, knock "Floor prayer," our door would fly open because we always left it ajar for Rachel.  She lived next door and dropped by frequently to entertain us.

Often when our door unexpectedly swung open.  Adam and Robbie would be at our window and (gasp!) be seen before we could quickly shut the door again.

CFRA frowned on boys being at our window.  A lot.

Then Christmas came. 

For Christmas, Erin got a hammock.  She was delighted by it and as soon as we were reassembled from our Christmas vacation, we hung it diagonally across our bookshelves.

On one floor-prayer-unintentional-flinging-open-of-our-door night, we were caught, red handed, in our hammock.

We didn't know it was against the rules.

But it was.

CFRA let us know.

Well that didn't set well.  Erin and I had always been good girls, irritatingly good, but wickedness is relative I guess and we were t-r-o-u-b-l-e.  We refused to get rid of the hammock.  We determined we'd just be more careful not to get caught.  We instructed Rachel that the door would no longer be left ajar when the hammock was up.  We'd always open up for her though.

The RA on our floor, Melissa, was good and benevolent.  She was from Mississippi and so sticky sweet she could cause cavities.  She decided to kill us with kindness.  Those rebel girls in room 1111.  She'd rap softly on the door, "Ya'll?  You want to go on a run?"  She'd be in shorts and running shoes and we'd usually join her in a run.  She was trying so hard.

One night though, Erin and I had the hammock up and we were swinging and chatting with Rachel.  There was a gentle knock on the door.  "Ya'll?"

Erin and I froze and looked at each other with wide eyes, "Just a min-ute."

We frantically started untying the complicated mess of knots we'd tied.  Apparently at Girls' Camp we'd only internalized the silly songs and not the knot tying lessons. 

Melissa, knowing full well the dimensions of our rabbit hutch dorm room, seemed to be getting suspicious.  She continued to knock and call to us and we continued to say, "Just a minute..." and try to stifle Rachel's giggles (she wasn't about to get in trouble like we were).

Finally we got one side of the hammock disengaged from my bookshelf and flung it over to Erin's bed.  We draped a blanket over it and Rachel sort of reclined on the blanket in a languorous pose, with a suppressed laugh threatening to erupt.

We weren't fooling anyone when we (finally) let Melissa in.  She mostly looked hurt.

But for the rest of the year...and especially when we got caught with Adam and Robbie at our window (which still happened regularly)...

...we got nothing but pursed lips and arched eyebrows from CFRA. (Maybe it wasn't us, maybe she habitually drank vinegar.)

Incidentally, we relinquished the hammock to Adam and Robbie and the more lax rules of the boys' dorm.  They'd swing in it and shoot baskets in the full size basketball hoop Robbie had mounted to the wall (I'm assuming he didn't use plastitak...CFRA would have had an aneurysm).  They'd let us swing in it when we visited them.  (Although we had to use the door to visit.  They lived on the third floor.)

So there you have it.  My delinquent past.