A bunch of you asked about the Ireland Girls. So I shall recount that story for your amusement.
I moved to Texas in 2001 to attend college at the University of Texas at San Antonio, chosen primarily for its distance from California and its close proximity to a major airport.
I was placed my first year in campus housing with Tara, Cindy, and Julie, and we remain great friends. The second year, Julie had gotten married, so Tara, Cindy, and I went through a couple of extra roommates, and then Tara and Cindy graduated and moved out. I was planning on staying one more year in campus housing before looking for my own place to live.
That first semester in 2003 I was gifted with one roommate, a girl named Shannon from the East Coast who was on an exchange program. She was okay at first. We were curious about our other roommates who were listed as being from Belfast, Northern Ireland, but hadn’t arrived yet. About a month into the school year Jayne and Jill finally got everything sorted out with their student visas and arrived in San Antonio. They were both on medical research tracks at their school back in Ireland and would be working at UTSA’s Health Science Center.
At first, because they didn’t know anybody, they were okay. Kind of a novel experience – they had the accents, they didn’t know much about America or Texas or whatever. We actually went to a few movies and I remember distinctly going to see 28 Days Later at the dollar movie theatre with them.
And then they started to make friends.
Because they were younger than me (they were 20) they obviously befriended younger folks, and it was then that I realized they were partiers, and Shannon too. And so the endless evenings of parties at the apartment began. Drinking, smoking, music, television, hanging around, you name it, it happened. There wasn’t much I could do except tell them not to smoke because I have a nicotine allergy. Of course, they weren’t smoking cigarettes…
Anyway, so over Christmas Jill turned 21. I’d never been so happy as to go home that Christmas – a month reprieve from their shenanigans.
After Jill turned 21, the drinking and amount of alcohol consumption shot up. Shannon had decided that she wanted to go home after the one semester, so we would be getting a new roommate, and shortly after we got back from break in January, Angela arrived.
At the time, Angela was 30, and probably the most beautiful black woman I had ever met. She seemed to click with the Ireland Girls, and I was peeved because I could really use an ally, you know? They would hang out and the parties resumed.
But then Angela started to get serious about school, since she was returning to get her degree, and she started to get really pissed off at the amount of people hanging around all the time, and would ask the girls to hang out other places but they completely ignored her and finally, there had been two straight weeks of parties and people being over, and Angela had had enough.
And here is the post I wrote on Diaryland on April 17, 2004, recounting the incident:
I was so tired last night that I conked out around 12:30 or thereabouts. As many of you may know (or not, whichever) I used to have a strange sleep schedule, and not go to bed until two or three o’clock. However, I have returned to the land of the semi-living, and tend to go to bed around midnight or a little after.
Anyway, I had to preface the following with that, as my point is that I was completely unconscious through the dramatic events that unfolded within my apartment late last night. Therefore, my story is from pieces of information that Angela filled me in on when I got up this morning.
Jayne and Jill (aka The Ireland Girls) were arrested last night for providing alcohol to minors.
A Class A Misdemeanor.
Apparently, Angela was in her room minding her own business when the girls came home with a bunch of their friends and were being loud and drunk. Angela and I have been discussing, as of late, how best to deal with this problem, as they have had people over every day for the last two or so weeks. I realize that they are “scientists” (HAHAH I totally typed that scientits) and we are but mere “students” but their attitude has been extraordinarily presumptous lately. No regard to the fact that we have to study or work on projects or anything.
Last night Angela and I stayed in after going to a poetry reading up at school, and we were going to make dinner and watch 20/20. However, shortly before the show started the girls showed up with their friends, and they were going to go to a movie later on in the evening. And their dumb friends sat down on the couch and infringed on our evening. Needless to say, there were more of them than us. After they left ages later, Angela and I were talking about how best to handle the problem, meaning, we couldn’t get through to the girls by just talking to them, so we thought to get a mediator from the housing office.
However, I then went to sleep and apparently they all came back to the apartment, and Angela asked them to be quiet (drunk people are loud) and Jayne got all snotty and said they could stay there until three, which is the agreement from LAST semester when Angela didn’t even live here, so that’s totally invalid now. (And I never liked that agreement anyway, but I got ganged up on.)
Anyway, so Angela got mad, and went back into her room, and called the police, as a noise complaint.
The cops came, but seeing all the alcohol, asked them if they’d been drinking, and they were, apparently, totally plastered, but told them no, and all their friends are underage.
So they got arrested.
Angela then spoke with an RA, and told him that she didn’t want them living here anymore, and he said he would talk to one of the bosses over at the housing office. So they might be moving out. And since Jayne already had a citation for underage drinking (a couple months ago before she turned 21) it could be grounds for her to get kicked out entirely.
!!!!
HOW IS IT THAT I SLEPT THROUGH THAT????!
The girls moved out a few days after that and were shortly gone for good after that, having violated their student visas. The incident even made the school paper.
GOOD TIMES!
Heh.
They brought it upon themselves, so it is hard to feel sympathetic, especially after the hell they put me through, since I am NOT a partier in any way shape or form. But I do wonder what happened to them and I hope that they’ve had okay lives.
I salute you, Jill and Jayne! At least things were never boring!