Being a Kilgore College Twirler demands no drops, big smiles and, as I’ve come to find out, a certain amount of craftiness.
I was a KC twirler last year and loved it, but decided not to twirl again this year because I wanted to spend more time on newspaper. Although I might not be on the line, I still want to be involved with the organization so I volunteered to have little sisters.
As a big sister, I am expected to get to know my little sisters, be there for them and, most of all, make them an insane amount of gifts. Big sisters give their little sisters gifts for the KCT slumber party, every day during the week of band camp and every football game, as well as several other events in between. And these aren’t just little gifts that can be thrown together in an hour.
The vast majority of gifts require some sort of creativity and artistic ability, and this is where I fall very, very short. My lack of crafty competence, combined with my propensity for procrastination made this whole gift-making business a disaster from the get-go.
You see, I was always the kid who wanted to run and hide in the bathroom whenever arts and crafts time rolled around. So when the time came for me to make my first set of gifts for the KCT slumber party, visions of epic crafting failure began to permeate my thoughts.
For my first set of gifts, I had to decorate pillowcases and pajamas and make hat bands. To make matters even more complicated, I had two little sisters, so I had to do twice the work. This might seem like a trivial work load to most, but to me, making cute, creative pillowcases, pajamas and hatbands seemed like an impossible task.
My first mistake was that I procrastinated on the gifts. The weekend of the slumber party crept up on me and before I knew it, it was the night before the party.
There I was, running around the Henderson Wal-Mart like a chicken with its head cut off, looking for paint, fabric, pajamas and everything else I would need. My original plan was to watch the finale of So You Think You Can Dance while working on my gifts, but due to my short attention span and growing infuriation that Kayla didn’t win, my gifts were pushed to the wayside once again.
So 9:30 rolls around to find barely any of my gifts finished. It turns out that I forgot to buy paint brushes at the store, and after a thorough search of my house, no paint brushes were to be found. Not wanting to make another trip to Wal-Mart, I did the next best thing and returned to my basic artistic roots, something I had once excelled at in kindergarten: I finger-painted everything.
And when I say everything, I mean everything: The pajamas, the pillowcases, the hat bands. I’m sure I would have finger-painted the gift bags if I’d had enough time.
Fingers stained with pink, teal and purple paint, I finally finished my masterpieces around three that morning. I went to bed satisfied that I was going to blow all the other gifts out of the water.
When I woke up, I excitedly showed my real little sister Collyn my finger-painted gifts. As I showed her my artwork, she struggled to hide a grimace and mumbled something about “it’s the thought that counts.”
Not willing to let Collyn’s lack of enthusiasm ruin my glowing pride in my gifts, I packed my parcels in the car and headed to the slumber party. Time came to give our little sisters the gifts, and I anxiously waited for shouts of joy and possibly a hallelujah chorus as my two little sisters gingerly removed their presents from the gift bags. However, no such thing happened.
As I looked around at all the other sophomores’ gifts, my cheeks turned cherry red and suddenly I felt ashamed of finger-painted presents. Compared to the other girls’ gifts, mine looked like they had been done by a toddler.
To make matters worse, the other sophomores decided freshmen should show everybody the wonderful gifts their sisters gave them. At this point, I wanted to flee the premises, far away from my finger-painted monstrosity.
Needless to say, I learned my lesson: don’t procrastinate on sister gifts and never, no matter how artistically challenged you are, ever resort to finger-painting.
Christian Keitt is the managing editor for the Flare.
I immensely enjoyed reading this.
I don’t blame you for not wanting to make another trip to Wal-mart:)