#13: The Woman Is Required to Pay

The echoes of incessant pillow talk wafting through the halls of Francis Crawford into the wee hours of the morn, and the giddy yet slightly distressed facial expressions that the class-of-2014 boys are currently sporting can only mean one thing: it is TWIRP season, ladies and gentlemen. For some girls--the few, the proud, the super-confident--TWIRP is a time of happy celebration. The only stress for these girls hits when they are forced to narrow down the list of their 30 closest guy friends to 6. However, for the rest of us ladies, TWIRP is a time filled with anguish. It's like all of a sudden our quasi-adult, emotionally stable, post-pubescent selves are transmogrified into those awkward middle-school versions from the past who sit at segregated lunch tables and read Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, and whom we have for years tried to purge from our memories. It's as if we have been transported from our dorm rooms and internship offices straight onto the 2002 Band-Camp-Dance-Night-Floor where we wonder if that 3rd chair, baritone-playing hottie who sits next to us in 2nd band will reject us if we ask him to slow dance to N'Sync's "This I Promise You." Sure, we OBU girls constantly reassure each other that "no, a TWIRP date is definitely not a real date but instead, a no-strings-attached time of co-ed bonding." But riddle me this, friends: if a TWIRP invite is purely platonic, then why do my palms sweat so darn much when I am promenading my partner dosey-doe on the Bridges' farm or Thrillering it up next to him on TC Planet? And just how do I say, "Yes, perhaps I have singled you out from the other 750 eligibles on Ouachita's campus as the boy I want to awkwardly race to the center of a twizzler with, but I most certainly do not want this night to end in a moonlit stroll down to the gazebo"? Basically, as Samwise and Dr. Sonheim "the man" would say, we girls are in a pickle.



But wait! All is not lost! I have a plan for keeping you both stress and DTR free this semester, my female friend:



Mission: Twirp an International

An international student makes a wonderful TWIRP date for a variety of reasons. First of all, you don't have to waste your breath forcing small talk because he won't understand most of what you say, anyways. (For best results here, twirp an Asian--his language barrier is conveniently wider than that of your average European or South American). Secondly, there's a good chance that your international date has already been betrothed since birth to a nice lass back in his motherland. Thus, you are off the hook on the DTR front! Thirdly, his country's cultural implications for male-female interaction are generally quite different than those of America, and the inevitable wrong signals sent as a result can be both funny and scarring for life! Lastly, if the whole platonic thing doesn't fly and you accidentally find yourself matrimonially obligated to this boy by means of a 20-camel dowry, a threat on your mother's life, and a fatherly hand-under-the-in-law's-thigh oath, you can rest assured that the two of you will make beautiful ethnic babies together.