Grace & Style: The Art of Pretending You Have It

The Sweatpants Diaries #3

Saturday, Oct. 24, 2015

Dear Diary,

I can't believe it's been a month since we last talked. I'm sorry; time has been flying by here. And there's so much to catch you up on that I don't know where to start.

Previously, in my diary . . .

The last month has been a whirlwind. The building seems to get bigger and more crowded each day, but I've been managing. My class schedule took a second to get used to, but it's okay now. Each day everyone starts in their assigned department stores. I'm in Nordstrom.

Which kinda sucks because it's mostly a lot of uptight, skintight formal wear and stilettos in there with me, so I usually just draw in my strings and try to go unnoticed. The rest of my class schedule isn't too bad. On Mondays, I have history at American Apparel; Tuesdays are English at Barnes & Noble; Wednesdays it's tech ed at Best Buy; Thursdays are health and wellness at GNC; and Fridays I have advanced outdoor discovery at L.L.Bean. Most freshmen sportswear start their athletic studies at Foot Locker, but after reading my entrance essay about the plight of synthetic fabrics afflicted with grass stains, the administration moved me into the advanced class. Which works out awesomely because Birk and Rees are in the class, too! On Saturdays and Sundays, all the freshmen are required to take a class in fashion retail studies, and this semester I'm in Hollister. Which is fine, except I'm the biggest piece of fabric in the whole store and I feel like an ogre. And all the upper-class flannels, who are constantly hungover, just want to turn the lights down and play loud music, so no actual work gets done. Instead, it's usually me, by myself, counting gold armbands in the back of the store while a bunch of halter tops and beanies lie around pretending they love whatever annoyingly loud song is playing.

Outside of class, I've been spending most of my free time with Birk and Rees. They've taught me how to snag extra buffalo sauce from the kitchen of Buffalo Wild Wings; shown me where the cleanest public bathrooms are (the kids' section of Barnes & Noble); and even made me a spare key to their secret hideout. They call it their Dream Den—it's the back room of the Hallmark store, where they go to burn incense, listen to CDs of whale sounds, and talk about life while huffing apple-pie candles. The three of us have been meeting in the Dream Den on Wednesdays and Fridays for the past few weeks to talk about our life plan, and we've been meeting in our "BFF" to work out our current big plan. 

SHI(R)T! The big plan! OMG, I HAVEN'T TOLD YOU! Sorry, fictional source of guidance, I haven't filled you in on any of it! I'm an idiot. I'm also sweatpants. I've been so tied up in my own emotional world that I forgot to fill you in on the bigger updates. I also forgot to work on my puns. Now may I offer you a cart so you can store some of the deep layers of knowledge I'm about to drop on you?

As you know, soon after meeting Rees and Birk, I carelessly dropped the term "Black Friday." But what you don't know is that they quickly encouraged me to never utter those words in the public areas of the MOA again. Yes, the first Friday of the semester they showed me their adolescent "Dream Den," but the second Friday they showed me their more advanced "Brain Fart Fort," an area beneath the Alpaca Connection (yes, an actual store in the MOA), where all the underground stuff goes down. The Alpaca Connection is a store located in between a Nail Trix and a MasterCuts. No one questions anything about the store because no one knows anything about alpacas. Classic Minnesota.

The Brain Fart Fort, or BFF as it is known in the MOA, is a dark market of liberal ideas. It's the place where people can post their open-minded opinions and establish public forums for radical ideas. It's a place to protest freely, to gripe legally, and to complain generously. 

What I didn't know was that the BFF is a hotbed of Black Friday activity. Birk and Rees first brought me there after my second L.L.Bean class, in which we learned the value of investing in a puffy vest. After an intents lesson about reinventing your tent, I thought I was heading to the Dream Den with Birk and Rees, but instead they brought me to the Alpaca Connection. I asked, "Why are we here?" And they said, "Because you're the missing piece." I immediately thought we all must have huffed too hard on a hard-cider candle, but they pushed me into a back room and sat me in a dark corner. I started to detect some movement nearby. When my sight settled, I noticed I was in a room with a couple pairs of clogs, a couple pairs of ripped Sears jeggings, and a couple pairs of panty hose. It was a room of misfit outfits. I thought I was being smuggled into a fashion graveyard, but then I remembered that I come from an extremely poor family, so there's no way they could hold me for ransom. After all of my absurd anxiety cleared, I finally whispered, "What do you mean?" and a familiar voice replied. "We're not mean," it said. "We've been waiting for you."

It was the voice of Dr. Scholls.

Ack, someone just threw a red-lined receipt paper roll through my storage door, Diary! That's a very bad sign! Diary, I should just close you right now, but I feel a need to continue to explain the underlying gang warfare, or crew spews, that happen at the MOA. The "threads" versus the "snips" is one of the most infamous rivalries. For years they've butted threads, but they had one day of peace years ago, a day called Black Fri— I gotta go, Diary! 

Sincerely,

Sweatpants

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