I Can't Make This Stuff Up.

Sometimes, when you talk with high school students, funny things happen. This is one of those times.


Here's some background for you: I'm doing a high school visit and have a table set up with school items and cookies. This girl walks up, carrying her high heels, and proceeds to tell me that her mom made her wear makeup and heels today and she has no idea why. After asking there was anything special going on that night, she begins to fill out a card to get more information and when she finishes, this conversation takes place:

Her: I'm no stranger to wearing heels or make up though. I do beauty pageants all the time.
Me: Oh really? (thinking that as much as I loved her sea foam green eye shadow, her make up didn't look like pageant make up)
Her: Yeah. I actually had my last pageant this weekend. I didn't do very good though. I only got 20th place.
Me: Oh really?
Her: Yeah, 20th out of 6500.
Me: SIXTY FIVE HUNDRED?! Wow, Well, I mean, comparatively, 20th is pretty good out of all of those people in the competition.
Her: Yeah, but I was really hoping to win so that I could break a record. Me and this other girl are tied for the most wins, 177 in a row. I needed to win this one so that I could set the world record.
Me: 177 wins in a row? (raise eye brows. 177, really?!)

At this point in the story a freshman girl walks up and says: "Oh cookies! How do I get one?" I explained that we were a college visiting that day to talk with juniors and seniors. She then asks where the school is located and I said Abilene. She then says, "TORNADO ALLEY!" and proceeds to spend the next 5 minutes talking about how she loves tornados and hurricanes, watches all these shows about them, has been in 4 tornados but only one hurricane. Beauty Queen then asks if we really have that many tornados in Texas, and I said, "No, I think she's thinking about Abilene, Kansas." Tornado girl then starts talking about all of her interests that she's thinking about majoring in, from pre-vet (because she just LOVES all animals) to nursing (because her mom is a nurse and wants her to be a nurse) to history (because she just LOVES history and watches all types of tv shows about it.) I really just nodded my head because it was a little hard to keep up with everything she was saying.

At this point in the conversation, (20 minutes into the 30 minute lunch break) Beauty Queen got tired of listening to Tornado Girl and walks off. TG is still going strong, talking up a storm. A few minutes later a guy walks up to see if one of the teachers could borrow a few pins. Apparently BQ saw him take the pins, so she came back over, starts talking again with TG and slyly sticks a pin into her pocket. (Or not so slyly, since I watched her do the whole thing.) I have no idea how she ended up at this point, but TG is asking about the dorms:

TG: Is it like being at camp? Because I went to church camp last year, and it really wasn't all that much fun. I don't like having to share the tiny bathroom with like 28 other girls.
BQ: I've been to a lot of camps before too, but there were like 40 of us that had to share a bathroom. I hate that.
Me: It's kinda like a camp, but there's not as many girls sharing the bathroom so it's really not bad. You don't usually have to wait.
TG: Well, that doesn't sound too bad. I just didn't really have that much fun at the camp. Probably because right before I left I found out my sister had cancer. Yeah, my mom knew before hand that my sister had cervical cancer but she didn't tell me until right before I left about it, so I was just like crying the whole time.
Me: Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry to hear that. Is she doing ok?
TG: Oh yeah, she's fine now.
BQ: I'm a cancer survivor too.
Me: Oh really?
BQ: Yeah, I had leukemia, brain, pancreatic and lung cancer. I'm ok now, but they think it's coming back in the breast.

Praise the Lord the bell rang at this time so both Beauty Queen and Tornado Girl had to go back to class, because I seriously could no longer keep a straight face. I mean, I thought the beauty pageant comments were a little odd, but I was going to give her the benefit of the doubt. Her multiple cancers put my giggles over the edge though. When I later talked to the counselor and told her who all stopped by my table, she just laughed when she read the student's name. Apparently (and obviously) you can't believe anything that comes out of her mouth. Honestly, this whole lunch visit had me looking around the cafeteria, just waiting for a camera crew to walk out and tell me I'm being punked.  My job certainly keeps me on my toes!


(and for real y'all, I'm not making any of this conversation up!)