Dear Tuffy Luv,
I moved for my senior year of high school and at the beginning had a little trouble making friends because it’s a small town, everyone knows everyone, etc. Finally, I did start making some, and one of the first ones was this girl, Peggy. Peggy is one of those people who is overly nice to everyone, so it really wasn’t surprising she was one of the first people to approach me.

So now it’s halfway through the year and I’m still friends with Peggy, except I’ve realized I don’t like her. At all. I found out the reason she’s so nice to everyone is because it’s one of her “Christian Values,” along with being extremely judgmental. She thinks she is a step above everyone else, and it is really getting to me. And now prom is coming up and she’s laid out this whole plan expecting me and whoever I go with to go along with it, and I don’t want to. But at the same time, I don’t want to be completely rude to one of the first friends I had. She isn’t the kind of person I really want in my life, but I put in a lot of time in the friendship earlier on because as a new senior I really wasn’t in a position to turn down friends and she seemed perfectly nice at the time!

So Tuffy, what should I do? Should I confront her or stick it out for the school year? We’re going to different colleges so there wouldn’t be any need to see her again. But if I do stick it out for the year I probably won’t be able to help sending her bad vibes so she might think I’m a jerk either way.

HELP!
Sincerely,
Friends?

Dear Friends?,
Judgmental people are poop, and poop is not to be stepped on.

Look, you’re right. If you don’t do what she wants, she’s gonna think badly of you no matter what. But I like your attitude, girl. You seem like a nice person who wants to clear the toxicity out of her life without hurting anyone’s feelings, and I appreciate that. So let’s get down to the advice.

I wanna say, kiddos, normally we do not run questions about high school. But this is a major problem for us all, yes? Frenemies, after all, has become a really standard part of the popular lexicon. And that’s sad, kiddos. Because we should really only be friends with people we LIKE. At any age, Tuffettes, we must be courteous to others, but REAL and TRUE to ourselves, yes?! STOP BEING FRIENDS WITH PEOPLE YOU DON’T LIKE!! But, if you find yourself in this situation, regardless of your age, here is Tuff’s advice:

First of all, Friends?, you absolutely should NOT do her prom plans. (The rest of you: don’t do her plans, period.) It will totally ruin your time, guaranteed, because you’ll be annoyed at her and resentful that you’re doing things her way and not yours.

Likewise, stop giving her the power to tell you what to do in your everyday life. Next time she tells you what to do (or, as you imply, guilts you into it), explain to her that you totally value your friendship but sometimes you have to do what feels right to you.

If she gives you any of this holier-than-thou shoop, you just tell her you’re sorry but that’s how you feel and she can take it or leave it.

Just another day in the country...

The summer before my freshman year of college, I packed my bags into the back of my car and drove to the big city. Cue the music, feel the rain on your skin, no one else can feel it for you… My blonde hair was whipping in the wind, my shades on. I was starting a whole new life, and although Raleigh, NC is nothing like LA and my life is far from an episode of The Hills, it was really exciting. I’m from a town where if you want to go to a mall, you have to drive forty-five minutes. A town where you can’t talk about someone, because chances are, it’s your friend’s second cousin.

So I did what any big-city-living-in-the-country girl would do; I said eff that and moved to the state’s capitol.

Oh the city; when your skyline came into my view I screamed and threw my arms into the air, excited to reside within your warm arms. For an entire school year, I danced on your bars, shopped in your stores, and fell in love with your boys. But when the summer came, I pulled a Scarlett O’Hara (“Home. I’ll go home…”). I figured the country would give me time to relax, to detox, and, frankly, it was closer to the beach. Things would be serene, and all that.

Yeah, until I smelled my town before I even entered it. Serenity (and the sound of tractors) is only interesting for about a day. I miss the city! I miss the constant buzz, the bars, and the stores! You would think I learned my lesson the first time, yet here I am, my sophomore summer, sitting in a town with a Food Lion and that’s it.

What the hell was I thinking?!

Shopping
I have a shopping addiction. My family cringes when I walk through the door because, chances are, I will have at least one shopping bag in tow. Now I get excited when I go shopping in Food Lion, a grocery store, a mere 2 minutes away from our house.

Night life
I ask you this: why do people around here find hanging out in parking lots “fun”? Am I the only one who is confused by this?! Where I once got numbers, I now get mosquito bites.

Boys
Okay, so I have a boyfriend now, but when I was single living in the city was like living in a candy store. There were so many sweet things to choose from, it was hard to pick just one. Not only do cities promise more boys in one place, they’re way bigger so you’re less likely to be dating your best friend’s third cousin on their mom’s side who used to have braces and wet the bed. Okay, I just don’t need to know about all that. Not to mention how awkward it is when your friend finds out! Oh, the days when people laughed and pulled out old pictures. Let’s not even get started on how you are dating someone that another girl dated in the fourth grade, and she has yet to move on.

Okay, so it’s actually kinda nice to fall asleep to the sounds of crickets chirping instead of girls stumbling and laughing in the dorm hallway. It’s not half bad that I no longer have to hide my accent for fear of being called “big country”. But I’m still counting down the days until I see that skyline once more in August.

How about you guys? Are some of you not so happy to be home?

In my last blog, I wrote about the splendors of holiday hookups. (If you haven’t read it yet, get on it!) Now that most of us have exhausted the extent of our winter break hook-ups, I thought I’d take a second look at this most treasured of holiday traditions. As it turns out, there are a few things that actually can go wrong…

The Parent Thing: Even though we’ve moved out, most of us hate the thought of our parents knowing anything about our sex lives. This proves to be a huge problem when you’re actually hooking up under their roof. Nothing makes you feel like you’re back in high school more than tip-toeing through your house with a guy in tow. If you stay at his house, on the other hand, you run the risk of being discovered by his Mom and becoming “that slut” that’s sleeping with her baby.

The Small Town Thing: No matter how big of a city you live in, you can’t deny that we live in a very, very small world. And nothing proves that more true than a hometown hookup rumor spreading like a wildfire. I swear, once one person finds out and spills the beans, it’s all over. You can bet by the end of the week anybody and everybody, from his Mom to your 8th grade woodshop teacher, will know of your little rendezvous(s). Or, if you’re like me and accidentally leave a hickey on his neck, you don’t even need anybody to say anything for the entire world to know. My bad.

The High School History Thing: This is slightly related to the Small Town Thing. If you and your hookup of choice are from the same town or high school, it is very likely that they have been involved with other people that you know. Just be sure that if you’re hooking up with someone, that you’re not gonna piss off your or your partner’s ex-lovers, best friends, or relatives. I learned this puppy the hard way, and believe me, it really sucks.

The DTR Thing: By DTR, I mean the loved and loathed “Define The Relationship” conversation. Once you start hooking up, you and your guy are going to have to discuss where you want your relationship is and where you want it to go. This holds especially true if you’re hooking up with someone you’ve already been involved with. Do you want to get back together or stay friends with benefits? Hookups during school breaks put an expiration date on any affairs, often speeding up the onset of the DTR and the difficult questions that ensue.

Did anybody else run into obstacles with their holiday hook-ups? Or am I just severely crippled in the suave department?

The most common insult for a freshmen: “man, that guy is trying too hard.” When coming to a competitive ivy league school, freshmen are immediately aware that the kids around them are some of the best students in the country. They probably were the small-town star of their high school, and now feel desperate to assert themselves, to still be the big fish in the rapidly expanding pond. Thus, while sitting next to a few freshmen chatting in a dining hall the other day, I was sad — sad, but not surprised — when after about 2 minutes, the test score discussions began.

“So what did you get on your SAT’s? I got ___.”

After the test scores, came the trips-to-Europe competition.

“I’ve been to Rome twice.” “Oh yeah, I went too, and Paris, and all over France as well.”

This is the epitome of Trying Too Hard, and you can see why it’s so annoying to upperclassmen. Freshmen exhibit the dreaded Trying Too Hard in every aspect of life, from reading every footnote and side-reference in the reading (and loudly announcing the fact in class), to getting ridiculously drunk because they think that’s the way college life really is. In a big, scary, competitive new school, these over-achieving high schoolers try applying the drive and shameless self-promotion it takes to get into college — to every aspect of life. It’s enough to make an upperclassmen want to avoid the eating clubs and especially any intro-level classes.

We don’t really need to compete with each other in this obnoxious way; there’s room for all of us to shape our personalities while in college, to find our own niches and be interesting people regardless of what test scores we have or how many countries we’ve visited. If only the freshmen would learn this a bit quicker — though I’m sure I went through my Trying Too Hard phase as well. I seem to remember bragging about my family’s trips to France as a Freshman… So we’ve all been there, but we don’t like to remember it.

Please, freshmen — just relax.