Sunday, September 18, 2011

Sometimes I go by Birdie

During my freshman year of college I had an interesting assortment of roommates. We all did weird things together. The list included posting pictures from Twilight on our FHE brother's doors, trying to put a giant snowball down the stairs to their apartment, running around with a roaring stuffed dinosaur and some even weirder things I didn't mention/forgot about.

One of the more interesting things that went on throughout our freshman year was the ever present "hacking" of our facebooks from Kara. Whenever anyone would leave their computers open, Kara would immediately go to it and get on their facebooks. Then she would post things to every roommate's facebook wall.

Things like "You look like a man with make-up on. ily." (Kara wrote this to herself from Amelia's facebook)

"I want to be King Kong. You can be Cinderella." (Kara wrote this to Brett from Sarah's facebook)

During Christmas break our freshman year, Amelia gave Kara her password so that Kara could continue to post weird things. So we get this one, "Hey, if you get back to the appartment before me, you might want to throw the pumpkin I left under my bed out. Thanks a big ton" (Kara wrote to Madeline on Amelia's wall). That one confused our RA, so that was pretty funny because usually people could tell that the posts were totally made up.

During one of these hacks of my facebook, Kara decided to do a little more than post weird things. She decided to change my name! Luckily, my name change was only added in parentheses. I became Laura Johnson (Laura Birdie Conrad). Kara then changed my status to say that I was going by Birdie.

In the couple weeks after that, winter semester ended and everyone was moving out of the dorms. Kara and I were going to live with each other in Regency, an off campus complex, during part of the summer.

Kara told me that I should go by Birdie to our new ward since it was such a fun nickname. I didn't really want to but I told her I would introduce myself as Birdie to at least one person.

Our first day in the ward we did a ward FHE in the park, playing kickball. Some of the people knew we were new to the ward and asked our names. As promised I introduced myself as Birdie, which people thought was funny, although nobody legitimately wanted to call me that, they would much rather call me Laura.

Well, except for one guy in our ward, Dan-o (I'm not sure how he spells his name but that's how it's pronounced). He was a weird kid. Anyone that goes by a name like that has some interesting quirks for sure. Anytime he would see me would call me Birdie. Except that it was more of a yell, BIRD-ie. Then I would look away embarrassed because by this time, everyone had forgotten I had ever told them about being called Birdie. 

One specific time, he came by my apartment to tell people about a movie his apartment was watching or some event. He didn't come in the apartment, but stayed right at our doorstep. I was sitting behind the door, at our table eating lunch, and was completely hidden from view. But clever Dan-o looked through the small vertical space in between the door and the wall and saw me. Then yelled BIRD-ie, probably one of the loudest he ever had. 

At that instant, I looked shocked and had on a terrified face. The whole situation was ridiculous and absurd and I couldn't figure out why he had to yell my weird nickname everytime he saw me. Luckily we moved out of the ward, and I never saw Dan-o again. 

In our new ward at Sparks, Kara decided that she was jealous of my nickname and so before the semester started we decided that hers could be Bunny. People would ask her why she wanted to be called Bunny. I explained that she gave me a nickname and then was jealous so I gave her one. So for a couple months, she went by Bunny before people too thought it was too weird and called her Kara.

A year and a half later, my name is still there as Laura Birdie Conrad.

3 comments:

  1. Dear Laura,
    I actually think your life for the last two years may or may not have been centered on me. Truth.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Didn't Anna have a funny name for a while too?

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  3. Kara-My life most definitely was centered around you. Everyone should know about you I pretty much talk about you daily.

    Brittany-Yes she did! It was Fievel Mousekewitz and her old roommate Mary put it up but Anna is lame and took it down.

    ReplyDelete