20 Adventures from my 20s: #1

For my first adventure:

TURNING TWENTY.

My turning twenty in and of itself was a fun memory. First of all, I was a sophomore in college at UC Santa Barbara. I lived in Isla Vista, in a three bedroom house with 5 other girls, my roommate was a senior named Amanda who I loved and still admire. She has the most pure heart of gold ever but still loved some good mischief, and I took pride in occasionally getting her riled up.

My roommates that year on Halloween. It was my genius idea to do Clue!

Me and Amanda!

In leading up to turning 20, I was lamenting about it to Amanda, who at the time was 21 and going on 22. I told her I was getting old and I distinctly remember telling her "But now I won't be able to sing Teenage Victory Song by Weezer!" but Amanda assured me that your 20s were way better than your teens.

While on the UC quarter system, my birthday always fell during finals week, which as you can imagine, was not cool. People were either stressed and needing to study (myself included) and/or done with finals and already bouncing out to maximize their spring breaks. Oh but that year, Amanda was willing to help me celebrate. Honestly, I have no idea WHERE we got the idea from, but we stayed up til midnight the night before, and then we decided to go chalk up the school campus. This included us making chalk outlines of ourselves and writing HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIKI everywhere. Not only was it gloriously satisfying, but the next day I actually heard people talking about it everywhere! "Who is Kiki?" I even had a dinner later in the week and heard my waiters at Chili's (who were likely all UCSB students) talking about the Kiki birthday chalk along the Arbor!

That whole adventure made me realize not only that I had so many great friends, but it really encapsulated the whole college spirit of being able and willing to do such dumb things at all hours of the night, and I owe a lot of that to the UCSB campus and Isla Vista itself, whose very nature and proximity always lended itself to such crazy and memorable hijinx.