Last weekend, my friend called me up and asked if I wanted to accompany him to Woodman's. He said he just needed to buy a few things for the party his fraternity was throwing that night. Thinking this would be about an hour long activity, I agreed. I was incredibly mistaken.
I spent my entire Saturday afternoon with two social chairs shopping for a fraternity party. It all started with the obligatory trip to Woodman's. When we pulled into the parking lot, and the guys started to get out of the car, I asked a simple question: "Wait, don't you have a list?"
Nope. Apparently, this is how they spend every Saturday, and they've got it down by now. We had no idea what we were getting, but the good store of Woodman's would show us the way. As we walked down the massive aisles looking for deals, we came across a sign of good fortune: 89 cent liters of soda. No matter that they were some sketchy off brand colas with weird flavors-- they were cheap. So we threw a casual 40 bottles of that into the cart, and we were on our way.
I thought cups would be our simplest task, but I was mistaken once again. I started to reach for the classic red solo cups when my friend shook his head at me. "We like to get the smallest cups for parties," he explained, because typically girls don't use the whole cup. I was impressed; cost-efficient and eco-friendly.
Then it was time for the alcohol. I listened closely to the guys' discussion about what alcohol to buy.
"We need champagne," said one.
"But what about Franzia?" said the other.
They ended up buying a vast assortment of alcoholic beverages. One so large that we had trouble fitting it all in the car, but they assured me that this quantity was normal. This stage took a couple of trips back and forth to the car.
Finally it was the most exciting step: decorations. One guy tried to decide if he should splurge on the disco ball, while the other picked out balloons and streamers. When I questioned who would have the time to set all of this up, they reminded me the obvious answer-- the pledges.
By this point I thought it was time to head home, but I was yet again jumping the gun. I was forgetting the crucial final stage: delivery. While we drove the supplies to the fraternity house, I overheard the guys making a phone call, summoning the pledges to the house for their duties.
When we arrived to the house, we realized the pledges weren't even there yet. We were in a bit of time crunch, so we decided to just take the task upon ourselves. We rounded up a couple more guys in the house and together, we unloaded the car-full of items. By this point, four hours had passed since I got that phone call from my friend. Also, I felt like I deserved to be an honorary member of the fraternity because I was exhausted from the long day.
As a girl, I had many thoughts running through my head that day. "Where does all this money come from?" "How do they even know this many people will show up to the party?" "Hey, guys are actually pretty good with decorations." But in the end, I felt pretty powerful from learning the inner-workings of a fraternity party.
