We must be having FISH

Aaaaahhhhhh, freshmen.

You can always tell which students are freshmen. They are the ones who stare at you with a blank look on their face when you ask for their classification while filling out registration information.

They are the ones who try overly hard to either fit in or be different, neither group really succeeding at their goal. They are also the ones who constantly remind you that you have grown and matured (i.e. gotten older) over the years.

This is the case of one such freshman I ran across the other day. The women’s basketball team was filtering through my office on Friday morning to get their pictures made for the media guides and things like that. They generally came through in groups of two or three, but all of them showed up within a certain time span.

I was standing in our make-shift photography studio chatting with the coach and assistant coach while waiting for the next subject to appear in jersey with her freshly applied make-up and perfectly styled hair – you know, just like they look when they are playing.

(Of course, that reminds me of a time I showed up at the end of a high school practice to get a team photo because I specifically wanted the girls to look sweaty and tired … not perfectly manicured. That was fun!)

As we are standing around, waiting, a young girl from Anson joins the conversation.

“Listen!” she says since the three faculty and staff members in the room obviously weren’t paying her due attention.

After myself and the coaches exchange a brief glance, we turn to the youngster who begins her multi-syllabic, yet singular-word spill.

“…there’s-this-guy-in-my-class-and-he’s-from-Anson-and-he-has-like-four-or-five-brothers-and-sisters-and-one-of-his-brothers-names-is-Anson … Isn’t that weird?”

… For some reason this impressionable young child couldn’t figure out why we were laughing so hard. It seems none of us had the heart to tell her she had just epitomized the chatty little girl character in every teen movie ever made.

I’m looking forward to basketball season. It’s going to be interesting, if nothing else.