Being
out of high school doesn’t change much if you’re still living at home. Holly
Liley is an almost adult who lives with her father and has been out of high
school since last winter. She is a master in the art of Spaz-Fu and will never
cease to amuse those around her. Not a person alive rocks the Spaz quite like
Holly.
Until she’s eighteen she can’t move out on her own.
Her birthday’s in December and she’s passes the time with miraculous
impatience.She almost moved out with a friend earlier in the year,
but was unable to find an apartment in Boulder. She refused to look in Denver.
“There’s nothing to do in Denver! I’m not moving to Denver!” When her
prospective roommate became mad at her, she said, “I’m not moving somewhere I
don’t want to be!” When she first intended to move out the question from
everyone she knew was, “Do you think anything will happen between you and him?”
Her response has commonly been, “Ewww! No! It’s Harry! Plus Katherine would
kill me! And it’s Harry! Ewww!”
With two months to go until she’s
eighteen, Holly passes the time by working at the Cave of The Winds. “People
don’t tip. We’re leading their butts around all day and they just expect it.”
(Like a person would a waiter, leave a tip for the tour guide.) After walking
through the same cave multiple times a day with several less than brilliant
tourists, she has heard many questions. People always ask what the blocked off
area is. The answer (if there are no little kids in the group) is, “Oh, that’s
where the Man Bear Pig lives.” That’s “Just in the off chance someone’s seen
the South Park episode.” She has explained to her friends many times that “No
the formations don’t all look like
penises, but there is that one formation near the entrance that looks sooorta
like a penis.”
While at work she endeavors to seem
normal and not scare away tourists, in the real world she is more than likely
to turn a few heads. Most everything that she does receives a very notable
“what the hell” look. One fall afternoon, her and a few friends drove down to
Colorado Springs. On a whim they decided to enter Micheal’s, the craft store,
and wander around for awhile. It wasn’t
long before something shiny was seen out of the corner of Holly’s eye. Or was
it purple? This required investigation. It was shiny and purple; a Halloween
decoration. Not just any decoration either. It was a purple, sparkly, Halloween
cat. It must be hers. It was a requirement of life. When she discovered that it
fit on her head perfectly like a hat, she made a b-line for the check out.
As
they walked towards the counter, she told her friends, “I love my shiny purple
ca…CHICKEN!” There just so happened to be bins
full of toy chickens. “How can one pass up the opportunity to play with toy
chickens?” Then out of the corner of her eye she saw it; the gleam of purple.
The cat was calling her. She stood up and returned to her b-line.
Back in the
car, she wore her new hat proudly and said, “What should I name him? He could
be like Rowdy from Scrubs!” “Rowdy was a dog,” replied one of her friends.
“Then I’ll name him Rowdy Cat!” The rest of the day was spent with Holly
holding her head out the window with Rowdy Cat on top of it and yelling, “I
would whistle, but I can’t!” at passersby.
With her blond hair, green eyes, and
lack of upper body strength, she is constantly in a state of mockery from her
friends. Her deep seated loathing for camping isn’t helped by the fact that it
takes her an incredibly amount of time to pound in one tent stake. It’s
remarkable how useless she is when it comes to anything involving camping. She
can’t lift water, coolers, or tents, she can’t start a fire, and she can’t
cook. In general she’s just there for comic relief. Her description of a three
day rainstorm during one camping trip goes as follows, “Most rainstorms are
like, ladidadida. This rainstorm is like ladidadi F**k You! F**k You! F**k You!
Ladidadida.” Her arms waved calmly during the ladidas with quick downward jabs
for the f**k yous.
One would usually say that her
spaziness would make even the oddest person seem normal. That is just not the
case. Upon entering a store with a group of friends, she said to one of the
more “hobo like” dressed friends, “So, Cassandra, what bridge did you live
under? Anyways, I’m glad we picked you up.” This only turned a couple heads
(granted there were only three other people in the store). For the rest of
their trip through the mall it was discovered that there was a security guard
keeping tabs on them. The “hobo” friend was of course blamed for this.
When she’s not falling over, trying
to convince people that she’s not drunk, or informing her Shakespeare class
that she “feels like a cat on a hot tin roof,” and if Tennessee Williams were
still alive she’d write to him about it, she is doing something of similar
nature. It is an incredibly rare occasion when she doesn’t do something of the
sort. (It probably means she was replaced by a robot or alien.) While people
who don’t know her will give her a raised eyebrow, open mouthed look, the
people that do barely even flinch. (After you’ve seen her climb
through a cat tunnel nothing much surprises you.) Like alcohol, liver, and
anything she cooks (excluding grilled cheese), Holly is an acquired taste.
Notes:
This was written back in October. Since then Holly has turned 18. She still lives at home and no longer works at The Cave of the Winds. She is however still as spastic as described above.
All of the above events are eye witness accounts from me. I, however, am slightly reluctant to admit that I was the "Hobo Friend."
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