‘Couples Club’ sparks singles’ spite PDF  | Print |  E-mail
Written by Makenzie Quinn   
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Frozen yogurt can be abbreviated to fro-yo, and fro-yo can be defined as rotten ice cream with an aftertaste of sour milk. With my group of friends, it can also be defined as the official hangout for the exclusive “I have a boy/girlfriend” club. This club meets, apparently daily, to participate in double, triple, and quadruple dates. And these club members do not limit themselves to frozen yogurt venues. No, they are slowly taking over the world, with their trips to Kennedy School’s soaking pool to strip down and get wrinkly with their significant other, and their little escapades to ethnic restaurants to marvel at the experience and wide variety of organic dishes. These and many, many other activities are enough to make us almost-extinct single people want to hurl. But in secret, it just makes us want to crawl under our beds and cry with jealousy. Being single used to be popular; it used to be that if you had a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you were an extremely rare breed. Because of your rarity, you were put under a microscope, questioned, poked and prodded like an eight-legged rat in an underground lab. Having a significant other was not expected, and so being single rarely caused any amount of angst. But as we’ve become older, and not as timid or afraid of the opposite sex, being an eight-legged rat has now become the norm. The club members are multiplying by the second, and it is becoming more and more obvious if you are still a regular rat with only four measly and pathetic legs. The worst part about the “I have a boy/girlfriend” club is that they try to hide their exclusiveness. They do this by inviting their single friends on their group dates, as if that is something anyone would ever be willing to participate in. This way they come out looking innocent and inclusive while we, the rejecters of their kind and selfless invitations, come out looking like the bad friend for refusing to be the third, fifth, or seventh wheel. A big part of them, and a part they will never reveal, knows we will reject their invite because everyone knows being the tag-along is pathetic and depressing. The club members are sneaky and manipulative. As for the reason they have these qualities—how else do you expect to get a boyfriend in high school? I do envy the fact that by being in the club you are opened to a vast number of new activities, because mine have become limited. It’s almost impossible to convince a group of single people to go spend $10 on a movie or a nice dinner when they would rather spend it on alcohol or drugs. Teenagers get drunk, more or less, to hook up with people. If you’ve been single for a while, you have hormones shooting out of your toes and you’re in a race with yourself to get laid, then alcohol seems like the easiest way to win that race. The club members, however, have no need to win; or rather, they are winning all the time and have no reason to compete. They have no reason to get obliterated every Friday and Saturday—Thai food is a nice alternative. Of course, the truth that I am violently spitting out is heavily weighed down with bitterness and anger, because I am not in the club. I call them out for all the time they spend together, how annoying they can be, their creativeness to do bizarre things as a group and to act more like adults rather than high school seniors; but this is out of spite. The club members won’t have to worry if no one will ask them to prom or that they’ll get rejected. They will have someone they’ll be able to refer to as their “high school sweetheart.” They will have dates for Valentines Day, while I will probably spend it watching a rerun of “The Bachelor,” hand in hand with a pint of ice cream.
 
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