panty raids Archives - grace grits and gardening

Alexander Hall, Baylor University, Waco, Texas

Saturday night. First weekend in

Waco. My room is tiny,

Every bit the size of my closet back home.

Evening spreads over the Brazos River, filtering

Through the Live Oak branches outside my

Dorm room. Above me stars

Reflect and twinkle, the same Big Dipper over the same

Earth. Yet everything feels different… The

Allure of laughter draws me into the common room, to a

Mahogany table covered in newspaper.

Situated in the center, a pile of panties? I’m not in
Arkansas anymore… more like the other side of the globe. A

Roomful of girls sit with heads down

Each busy at work. Days of the week, black satin,

Multi-colored, every style panty imaginable spread

Across the table. They paint names and phone numbers

Down the sides and even on the crotch! My super

Excited roommate, a girl who

Organizes her Izod shirts by color, squeals it’ll be

Fun! A 100 year old Baylor

Tradition—the first freshman panty raid of the semester.

Hurry! Grabbing my craziest red plaid Christmas bikinis,

I draw a heart and toss my name to the

Sidewalk below.

Sic ’em Bears!

talya

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

This was written especially for FEARLESS FRIDAY PRACTICE –Think of a song you listened to over and over at a crossroads point in your life. Note to yourself the emotion you felt connected with this song. Do an acrostic off the title of this song. Write about a specific event in the period in your life the song’s associated with, but DON’T use the emotion or a synonym — rather, let the emotion be expressed by the specific telling of the event.

Somewhere in the acrostic, include the following words: newspaper, branch, mate, globe, plaid, Big Dipper.

P.S. If you are reading this post from your phone, the acrostic phrase may not line up correctly…Oh well.