My freshman year of college in Southern California, I spent a lot of time adjusting to the differences between my new home and my old one, Oregon.In California they had stuff like styrofoam cups and buildings with many rooms that could only be accessed from the outside. Everyone owned an umbrella and would carry it with them at the slightest hint of clouds. Convenience stores were called Liquor Stores and anyone of any age could just walk right in. Grocery stores also sold liquor and clerks only carded the person actually making the purchase, as opposed to everyone else in line with them.
Oh, and there were lots of hot chicks.
There was one hot chick in particular I kept seeing around campus who was notable for the fact that she always wore a mini-skirt. No matter what. And, it wasn't like the approved 1999 fashionably correct version of a mini-skirt. It was like a music video from 1985 mini-skirt. It always looked like the same skirt, so I was never sure if she just wore the same mini-skirt every day or if she had a closet full of identical mini-skirts. Even among the sea of hot chicks who were often not wearing very much at all, mini-skirt girl stood out. Her skirt was shorter than the rest and her legs were longer. It was hard not to stare when she walked by, or, if you were lucky, sat opposite you and crossed her legs.
Now, Southern California is a magical land where the natives will gladly sit in below room temperature air conditioning in shorts and a t-shirt but then bundle up if they have to step out into a 75 degree evening. So, as the summer turned to fall and fall turned to winter, everyone on campus stopped showing so much skin. Eventually, since we were in the middle of the desert, we got evenings that were actually chilly and not just fake Southern California chilly. I thought to myself, even Mini-Skirt Girl, as I had named her, couldn't put up with this change in climate and it would only be a matter of time before I saw her in jeans, like a normal person.
One evening I walked to the computer lab to do some work, since our campus must have been one of the last ones on the planet to embrace the Internet. As I worked at my computer, I looked across the room and saw Mini-Skirt Girl sitting across from me. Finally, I had my answer: even she, who had worn her mini-skirt every day I had ever seen her, was now bundled up in a big, fluffy white furry jacket. I didn't know whether to be happy or sad. On one hand, it proved she was human. On the other, there would be a certain kind of victory if she had proudly stuck to her mini-skirt ways in the face of adversity.
Then, something amazing happened. She finished her work and stood up to leave the lab, and as she walked by I realized I hadn't been able to see the bottom half of her body in her sitting position. Sure, she had on a big fluffy white fur coat, but below that there was nothing but her bare, tanned, statuesque, legs. I caught a glimpse of her mini-skirt, but the fluffy coat was long enough that if you just glanced in her direction it looked like she was wearing the coat and nothing else, except a pair of boots.
So, it was a victory, after all. Mini-Skirt Girl had earned her name. I don't know if she was from Southern California or not. If not, she had out Southern California'd the Southern Californians. If so, she was the ultimate native.
I only spoke to Mini-Skirt Girl once or twice. Once, a friend of mine was being all boastful at dinner in the cafeteria as we admired her from afar.
"Pff," he said. "She's not all that. I'd totally ask her out."
"Yeah right," I said. "You'd be too scared to talk to her."
"No way, she's just a chick like anyone else," he said.
"Well, then go talk to her," I said.
"Oh," he said. "Uh, not right now. I'm eating."
"Convenient," I said.
"Well, you wouldn't ask her out either," he said.
It was beside the point, but my need to be right about everything outweighed my fear of women, so I said, "I'll do it right now."
"Yeah, right," he said.
That was all I needed. I got up and walked right over to her.
"Hey," I said, while she dumped her tray in the trash.
"Oh, hey," she said.
"What are you up to this weekend?" I asked.
"Oh, hanging out with some friends, why?" she asked.
"I was wondering if you wanted to do something," I said.
"Oh, sorry, I can't," she said. "What's your name?"
"Paul," I said.
"Oh, I'm -- ," and then she told me, but I forgot. All I know is it wasn't Mini-Skirt Girl.
Anyway, she was surprisingly nice and smiled a lot, which is more than I would have done if a stranger would have come up to me and asked if I wanted to hang out. It wasn't one of those rejections that was terrible and embarrassing. It was more like meeting a celebrity and being surprised that they gave you the time of day at all.
I returned to the table, romantically defeated but personally victorious for having proven my balls to my boastful friend.
"Yeah, right," my friend said. "You probably asked her what time it was, or something."
But, I knew the truth.
After that, she always made sure to smile and say "hi" to me every time I happened to walk by her, which I thought was nice. Eventually, she disappeared, before the year was over -- either dropping out, or transferring to another school, or who knows what.
I wonder if she looks back on her mini-skirt days and laughs at herself for obsessively wearing them. I prefer to picture the rest of her life going by, mini-skirt always present. Getting married in a tiny white mini-skirt version of a wedding dress, giving birth in a mini-hospital gown, risking frost-bite in Antarctica where she's moved to study seismic activity with a group of equally eccentric scientists. Eventually she'll die, and she'll have an open casket funeral, only it'll be the bottom half of the casket that'll be open instead of the top half.
To prove to everyone she's still got it.
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