  So... about Sun-In. My friend Jenny introduced me to Sun-In at art camp that summer. Jenny already had long blonde hair but as she used Sun-In, I watched her hair become blonder and sleeker every day. Then Rachel started using it. Rachel had light brown hair and her hair lightened beautifully too. Naturally, I figured I could benefit from some Sun-In myself.
Sun-In FAIL.
A word of warning: even if you think your hair is medium brown according to this chart, it's not. And even if it is, after 2 days in the sun it will NOT look like the sandy sunny hair promised. It will be orange. Rust orange. An orange that no human's hair should ever be. My Sun-In makeover did not transform me into the supermodel I thought I'd become... instead, it was a heart-breaking downgrade and waste of $5. Not to mention I was punished with a horrible hairstyle (just imagine the roots) for all of 7th grade. As if struggling with a lack of popularity and attention from boys wasn't hard enough as it was.
Since the Sun-In experience, I've come to accept that I have dark brown hair. Not quite the-darkest-brown-there-is dark but dark enough that in high school, guys I'd talk to on the phone or Internet after meeting just once would say things like, "Yeah, you're the girl with black hair." I used to think they weren't paying attention, but enough guys said it that I was finally convinced that my hair is dark enough to be considered black.
If only I had embraced my dark brown hair, maybe I wouldn't have thought I was such a "UD".
    Who would have thought that planning a simple sleepover would cause so much drama? Too bad I didn't know the word "hypocrite" back then, otherwise I would have used it. It would have been much more descriptive and accurate than calling Rachel a "rat"-- which I don't really understand why I chose that word.
However, I do enjoy my usage of the backwards spelling of "fuck". I learned that from listening to TLC. It was during this summer that Rachel, Jenny, and I were obsessed with the TLC "CrazySexyCool" tape. During our breaks at Art Camp, we would play that cassette on our Walkmans (Walkmen?) over and over and sing along. We were little suburban girls singing about drugs, sex, and gang violence... topics we couldn't relate to, much less understand. But that didn't stop us from memorizing every lyric.
I've learned that when you memorize something at a young age, it tends to stay with you forever. I can still recite the alphabet backwards and the 50 states in alphabetical order. I still know the recorded warning played in the line of Waldameer's Whacky Shack and the lyrics to Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. And I can still sing the rap parts of TLC's "Waterfalls" and "Sumthin Wicked This Way Comes". It is in the "Sumthin Wicked This Way Comes" rap that I learned KCUF ("What the kcuf is going on?"). TLC probably altered the word to avoid a Parental Advisory warning, but I thought it was cool and saw it as a clever way for me to get away with swearing without actually swearing. Sneaky.
What do you think... will Rachel and I be friends again in the next entry? Or was that friendship over for good?
 Tsk tsk. Kids smoking at age twelve. How sad.
I don't know how I came to feel so passionately about smoking. You'd think something traumatic had happened to me when I was a child... like those stories you hear of parents burning their kids with cigarettes or ashing in their kids' hair or something crazy. But nope, my parents didn't smoke. I don't remember any of my friends' parents smoking either. My grandparents did, but rarely in front of us. Maybe that was the key. Since I was never around smoking and because my family treated smoking like something bad that needed to be hidden... I learned it was something that I was supposed to hate.
And I'm glad I learned that early. To this day, I've only tried a cigarette once... and I was drunk and only took like two hits, so it didn't really count, right? I went through a phase in college where I enjoyed smoking cigars... but cigars, to me, weren't as gross as cigarettes because they smell good and you don't inhale the smoke. But I'm over that... and now I'm happily and healthily smoke-free.
Unfortunately, my underexposure to cigarettes has led to some slightly embarrassing situations. One of these times was in high school. I was a senior and was tutoring a freshman in French. He was flicking and flipping his pen as I taught him. I thought it looked cool so I asked him how to do it. Nonchalantly, he responded, "Just pretend like you're ashing a cigarette." I gripped my pen between my fingers and went along with it like I knew what the hell I was doing... and... proceeded to violently fling my pen all the way across the classroom. Ughhh I felt like such a square. But he probably wasn't surprised. Seniors who stay after school to tutor probably do not participate in any type of smoking.
Another time was a few months ago when one of my coworkers brought a pack of candy gum cigarettes to work. When he handed me one, I noticed one end was shaded brown... and I couldn't remember for the life of me which end you put in your mouth. I tried to remember all the pictures and movies I've seen of people smoking... tried to think of all the people who used to smoke at the bar (when you could still smoke at bars)... and drew a complete blank. Nervously, I shoved it my mouth and quickly chewed the whole stick. Problem solved.
The most recent time was five minutes and two paragraphs ago when I asked my friend who used to smoke in high school if it's correct to say I took two "puffs" of a cigarette. He told me to use "drags" or "hits" instead. I've never heard anyone say "drag" in my life except maybe on TV and I've always considered "hit" to be a term more related to recreational drugs. But apparently people who know what they're talking about definitely do not say "puff". Who knew? So, I went with "hit". At least I've heard people use that word.
   Yes, Rachel got mad at me because I said the D's house was a split level. Rachel lived in a split level house and apparently thought hers was the only one in the neighborhood.
Her house was the kind where you walk in the front door and are immediately confronted by two sets of stairs, up or down. The D's house was slightly different. The entrance opened right into the living room/kitchen/dining room part of the house and then over on the side were stairs down (to the family room) and stairs up (to the bedrooms).
I considered both to be split levels but for some crazy reason, Rachel was offended by this suggestion. She probably got mad at me and made me apologize for being wrong. Seems like that happened a lot.
Well in your FACE, Rachel, because my good friend Wikipedia describes a split level as:
The front door opens directly into what is usually the formal living area. This mid-level floor houses Living Room, Dining Room, Kitchen, and has a short flight of stairs leading up to bedrooms, and another short flight of stairs leading down to informal living areas and garage. Ha! And it gets better! Turns out Rachel's house was actually called a "split entry":The entry is between floors. The front door opens in a foyer or entry area located in a wing off the main house. From the entry, a short flight of stairs leads up to the top floor and another short flight leads down.
So who deserves the apology now, huh? It's only like 13 years later. There's still time. I'll be waiting. Man, I wish we had the the Internet and Wikipedia back then!
---Okay, okay... if you checked out that Wikipedia entry yourself and are on Rachel's side of the fight (jerk), you'd be quick to point out that it does say...
In some regions such as the Northeastern United States, the term "split level" is used to refer to a bi-level house with a split entry. This style of house is also known as a "split foyer." This is a two-story house that has a small entrance foyer with stairs that "split"—half a flight of stairs go up (usually to the living room, kitchen, and bedrooms) and half a flight of stairs go down (usually to a family room and garage/storage area). So dammit. I guess we were both kind of right. We just didn't know which definition we were arguing over. Still wasn't cool for her to get pissed over it.
---
And this has probably been more than you ever wanted to know about split level houses, huh? I promise this knowledge will be useful next time you get in a fight over suburban architecture.
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So... about Sun-In. My friend Jenny introduced me to Sun-In at art camp that summer. Jenny already had long blonde hair but as she used Sun-In, I watched her hair become blonder and sleeker every day. Then Rachel started using it. Rachel had light brown hair and her hair lightened beautifully too. Naturally, I figured I could benefit from some Sun-In myself.
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