Whut.

So yesterday, we visited a couple of global businesses as part of this study abroad thing I'm doing. One of these was Stanley Black & Decker. As part of the presentation we were given, a timeline was shown on the screen, which included the invention of the retractable utility knife in the nineteenth century by Mr. Stanley. This caused me to have a lightbulb moment of "Oh my God, THAT'S why it's called a Stanley Knife?!?!?!?!?!" Yeah. I'm a smart cookie, y'all. It's taken me 29 years to work out that a Stanley Knife is called a Stanley Knife because it's made by Stanley.

Thank you, Heath.

ANYWAY. That wasn't the actual story I wanted to tell. The actual story I wanted to tell happened on the bus back from Baltimore yesterday evening. So our group is turning out be remarkably like that scene in Mean Girls where Janice describes all the different cliques. You know the scene I mean, right? So there's the  Varsity Jocks (the boys shaped like inverted carrots who wear skinny jeans and tight t-shirts, and who pay absolutely no attention in class), the Desperate Wanna-Bes (the hangers on to the boys shaped like inverted carrots), the Plastics (girls who spend more time talking about shopping than anything else), and The Coolest People You'll Ever Meet (those of us in the library stream. OBVS). We seem to divide quite naturally into our little cliques, which also seem to coincide quite nicely with which degree people are doing.

Anyway, so we're driving back towards DC, and the Varsity Jocks/Plastics are making me stabby. I'd neglected to bring my iPod, so I couldn't block them out like Agatha Goodkin had. I DID, however, have my Kindle with me, which was something. But not having headphones meant I could hear their entire conversation. Which, at one point, went like this:

Plastic: "Oh my Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooood!!! AN IHOP!!!!!"
Varsity Jock: "What's that?"
Plastic: "An International House of Pancakes?"
Varsity Jock: "WTF?"
Plastic: "It's like the Pancake Parlour."
Varsity Jock: "Oh. Okay..."
Plastic: "I REALLY want to go there!!!"
Varsity Jock: "Uh, why?"
Plastic: "I read about it in a book."
Varsity Jock: "Oh, okay. What book?"
Plastic: [mumbles]
Varsity Jock: "Sorry, I didn't hear you."
Plastic: "Fifty Shades of Grey..."
Me: [Furiously searches for phone to text Lor and Sweeney, then dies from repressed laughter]
Plastic: "Christian takes Ana to one, and she's all "OMG, this billionaire is in the same place that my mum used to take me for breakfast!" and it's suuuuuuuuuuuuper cute, and now I want to go to IHOP!"

So yeah. That happened.

As Lor said to me yesterday when she replied to my text, "I hope she's not disappointed by the lack of billionaires and domestic violence."

K xx