I didn't write this but a great female friend of mine did some 26 years ago. She was a good sport.
“PLEDGING TALES”
I was 20 and a student at a State College when I decided to pledge a sorority. I never saw myself as a “sorority chick” but I wanted to meet girls my own age who stayed on campus over the weekends. Most of my dorm-mates were freshmen and when Joann asked me to go to Rush Week with her at the Student Union to check out the campus sororities, I thought Sure Why Not.
Joann and I talked with three different sororities that night, the last being Theta Pi Omicron. I really liked the sisters that I met. They were my age, funny and pretty down to earth. We went back the next night and got invited to a party TPO was having at their house off campus that Saturday night.
At the party we met all the other sisters and had a blast! The party was a mix of Greek and non-Greek students and alumni and we talked to most of the sisters from the sorority both past and present. By the end of the night, I had decided that I would put my name down and if I got a bid, I would pledge TPO.
See in order to be accepted into a Sorority, you need to attend a Rush function and then if the girls like you, you receive a bid to pledge their organization. Pledging is a period that usually lasts 4-6 weeks and is 24 hours/7 days a week.
After Rush Week is when the bids are mailed to your dorm. Both Joann and I received bids from TPO. We were both very excited and nervous because we had heard pledging and hazing stories and wondered what pledging would be like and how it would affect our studies. We sent back our acceptance and shortly afterwards received our invitation to the Induction Ceremony.
It was at the Induction Ceremony that Joann and I met the rest of the pledges that we would be working with for the next 6 weeks. That was the night I first met Jenny. After the ceremony was completed, the 9 of us pledges met to exchange our information and basically get to know each other as we will have to work together to achieve sisterhood.
We were also assigned a “Pledge Mom” who is a Sister that is there to guide us through pledging. Christine was our “Pledge Mom” and she was one of the reasons why I pledged to begin with. Christine was so breezy, fun and light-hearted. She looked like a brown haired pixie and always had a smile and quick laugh. If Christine was frowning then you knew you were really in trouble or that something was really wrong! She explained to us about the functions and tasks that we would need to accomplish over the next several weeks.
Pledging consisted of tasks and assignments that were created to build a Pledge Class bond, to teach us how to work together despite our very different personalities and to drill home the importance of Sisterhood. Some of the tasks/assignments had been handed down for years and dated back to the very first Alpha Pledge Class.
Not surprisingly (she adds modestly LOL), I was a well-liked Pledge. I was always a calm-head at meetings, worked hard to accomplish the tasks and was the age of most of the “Big Sisters” in the sorority. A “Big Sister” is assigned to every pledge. Your “Big” is that one sister that also is there to guide you through pledging, to be there for you if it becomes difficult, and you need to see them every day. I also had a good GPA which helped bring the Sorority GPA up. You see, if a sorority as a collective does not maintain a certain GPA level that is dictated by the college, then they will lose their charter. One of the things sisters look for in prospective pledges was their academic history and a pledge could lose her spot if her grades suffered during pledging. That is another reason why your Big has to check in with you every day. To make sure your grades don’t drop during the process.
I got along with mostly all of my fellow pledges, except for Jenny. Jenny seemed to be the one out of step not just with me, but with everyone else. She would always show up late for our pledge class meetings with our “mom” and then make excuses. She would lag behind during functions and she never pulled her weight. For some reason, I seemed to be the target for her dislike. She always seemed to blame me when she got in trouble, like my doing well was a personal affront to her. The other pledges noticed it and rallied behind me, which further irritated her.
Things came to a header during the biggest pledge task we had during our 6 weeks. All of the pledges from all the sororities on campus had to put on a skit to be performed in front of the entire Greek community at school. The TPO sisters took this competition very seriously as your reputation as an organization is based on how well your pledges perform and are viewed by the other Greeks. Our pledge class, The Phi Class, had to come up with the skit, make the costumes, direct the music and perform the skit…and we had to have the finished product by the 5th pledge week.
As you can imagine, a lot of work went into this production. We met with our Mom and decided to do a skit about a pledge who tried to trick her sisters that she was too injured to participate in a pledge function, but then realizes she tricked herself out of a party. I suggested the idea and was inspired by the Little Rascals episode, Fishy Tales, where Alfalfa tries to convince Butch that he is hurt and can’t fight. There were 5 of us who knew the episode and thought it was a great idea and a good twist on pledging. Everyone except Jenny that is who thought the idea was stupid. Well she was outvoted and our version of “Pledging Tales” was born.
We worked hard on our sets, making one look like a dorm bedroom and the other one our sorority house. We even got one of the old mattresses from the TPO House and cut a hole into it. We decided that three of us would be the “Sisters” looking for the “Injured Pledge” there would be the pledge in the bed, and the other pledges comforting her. We voted and I was elected the “injured pledge” who would be in bed with my “hurt leg.”
I can’t stress to you the importance of this event for the sorority. Pledges had been known to be kicked out for messing up during the show. TPO was fiercely protective of its reputation and by the time the show came around we knew we were almost finished with pledging. None of us wanted to lose our spot or let the sisters down. All of the late night tasks, daily treks and activities had really made us want to be a part of TPO, myself especially! I didn’t want to let anyone down, least of all my pledge class.
So the day of the show arrives and we get to the Student Union to get ready and Jenny is nowhere to be found. The Sisters were furious, but we were a bit relieved because she had been acting really weird during the last couple of rehearsals. But because by this time we are supposed to be a unit, they told us that if ANYTHING went wrong with the skit that we would all be kicked out and there would be NO PHI PLEDGE CLASS! We knew they were deadly serious as they had done that to the Sigma Pledge Class. We had learned that lesson during one of our study sessions and we were terrified to have history repeat itself.
We got ourselves into position for the opening curtain. Since I was to play the injured pledge, I was wearing a long gold nightgown that came to just below my knees that had the State College logo in brown across my chest. I was wearing thick, yellow wool socks that came up to my knees so no part of my leg was showing. I got settled into the bed and put my right leg into the hole in the mattress. My entire calf up to my knee was in the hole and I realized we had never practiced with my leg in the hole before. I couldn’t move my leg; the opening was just big enough for my leg but not much wiggle room at all. I was good and stuck. I was a little nervous about that but I knew it was a short skit, and I wouldn’t have to have my leg trapped for hours so I relaxed. My “hurt leg” was stuffed with socks and newspaper to look like a real leg and my hair was pulled up into a blond ponytail, minimal makeup. As the curtain went up, I affected a painful look and prepared for my lines.
As soon as the curtain went up, I felt something brush my leg under the mattress. At first I thought it was just a cobweb or piece of the mattress and didn’t pay it much attention. Then as I began to say my first line, I felt the top of my yellow wool sock under the mattress get pulled out from under my nightgown. Someone was pulling my wool sock down very slowly and I couldn’t do a thing about it. I began to sweat but miraculously I was still able to say my next line. By the time I finished that line, my sock was completely off below, revealing my bare foot with metallic blue nail polish. All of us pledges had gone for pedicures right before the skit and I chose blue because it was our sorority color.
Well after I get a pedicure my feet are really sensitive and to add to that, the woolen sock had my foot nice and warm. As I began my next line, I felt something light and feathery tickle the instep of my foot then work its way to the base of my toes. Good Lord I was dying inside. I knew I couldn’t break role or I would ruin the skit and I didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize my pledge class. But finally the feathery tickling stopped and I stared to relax again.
No sooner had I taken a deep breath but then I felt something hard begin to tickle in between my big toe and work its way through all ten toes. My face was bright red and sweat began to trickle down between my breasts, dampening my nightgown. It seemed to go on for hours, the moving back and forth over my foot and toes. With each tickle, my toes and foot got more and more sensitive. I was beginning to see stars with the effort of trying to keep still and stay focused. Just when I thought I would break, the tickling stopped and I breathed again. Good God how long was this skit? Wasn’t it almost over by now? Those were the thoughts that kept running through my mind.
As we began the final lines and I felt the end was in sight and I could survive this, I felt a hand grab my ankle and then fingernails begin tickling my heel and then working harder up to the base of my toes. I was sweating in earnest now and my face getting redder. As the mysterious fingers worked the bottom of my foot they glided over the tops of my toes and began to slowly and thoroughly tickle the top of my foot. Back and forth, back and forth nails trailed over the sensitive top of my foot gently scraping from the toes to my ankle. I tried to kick out and wiggle my toes, but the hand just gripped my ankle tighter and tickled me with even more feverous vigor. It was driving me mad!
I thought I would scream I wanted to laugh so hard!!!! I knew the show was almost done and it took all my effort to stay in character. Then the hand moved up my calf and tickled harder getting up to the back of my knee. Well I couldn’t stay quiet at that. Thankfully it was the end of the show and I was supposed to be crying at missing the party. I muffled those “cries” with laughter and my entire nightgown was drenched in sweat!!!
I was never as relieved as when I could take my leg out and take my bow! I had one bare leg and my nightgown clung to me. Ironically enough our skit took first place and our status as sisters was secured!
It was discovered that Jenny had snuck underneath the stage. The mattress had been placed over the trap door on the stage and she decided to use the entire version of the Little Rascals episode to get me to break and ruin the show, thereby getting my entire pledge class kicked out of the sorority.
Thankfully her plan backfired and the sisters let us decide Jenny’s fate. We voted her out of the pledge class and word spread of her attempted sabotage so she never received another bid from any other sorority on campus!!! She was shunned by the entire Greek community and was never invited to any Greek party for the rest of her college career!!!
So that is the story of how someone tried to get me kicked out of TPO. Thankfully it was a short skit or I don’t know how long I would have lasted getting tickled like that! Hope you enjoyed my tale.
“PLEDGING TALES”
I was 20 and a student at a State College when I decided to pledge a sorority. I never saw myself as a “sorority chick” but I wanted to meet girls my own age who stayed on campus over the weekends. Most of my dorm-mates were freshmen and when Joann asked me to go to Rush Week with her at the Student Union to check out the campus sororities, I thought Sure Why Not.
Joann and I talked with three different sororities that night, the last being Theta Pi Omicron. I really liked the sisters that I met. They were my age, funny and pretty down to earth. We went back the next night and got invited to a party TPO was having at their house off campus that Saturday night.
At the party we met all the other sisters and had a blast! The party was a mix of Greek and non-Greek students and alumni and we talked to most of the sisters from the sorority both past and present. By the end of the night, I had decided that I would put my name down and if I got a bid, I would pledge TPO.
See in order to be accepted into a Sorority, you need to attend a Rush function and then if the girls like you, you receive a bid to pledge their organization. Pledging is a period that usually lasts 4-6 weeks and is 24 hours/7 days a week.
After Rush Week is when the bids are mailed to your dorm. Both Joann and I received bids from TPO. We were both very excited and nervous because we had heard pledging and hazing stories and wondered what pledging would be like and how it would affect our studies. We sent back our acceptance and shortly afterwards received our invitation to the Induction Ceremony.
It was at the Induction Ceremony that Joann and I met the rest of the pledges that we would be working with for the next 6 weeks. That was the night I first met Jenny. After the ceremony was completed, the 9 of us pledges met to exchange our information and basically get to know each other as we will have to work together to achieve sisterhood.
We were also assigned a “Pledge Mom” who is a Sister that is there to guide us through pledging. Christine was our “Pledge Mom” and she was one of the reasons why I pledged to begin with. Christine was so breezy, fun and light-hearted. She looked like a brown haired pixie and always had a smile and quick laugh. If Christine was frowning then you knew you were really in trouble or that something was really wrong! She explained to us about the functions and tasks that we would need to accomplish over the next several weeks.
Pledging consisted of tasks and assignments that were created to build a Pledge Class bond, to teach us how to work together despite our very different personalities and to drill home the importance of Sisterhood. Some of the tasks/assignments had been handed down for years and dated back to the very first Alpha Pledge Class.
Not surprisingly (she adds modestly LOL), I was a well-liked Pledge. I was always a calm-head at meetings, worked hard to accomplish the tasks and was the age of most of the “Big Sisters” in the sorority. A “Big Sister” is assigned to every pledge. Your “Big” is that one sister that also is there to guide you through pledging, to be there for you if it becomes difficult, and you need to see them every day. I also had a good GPA which helped bring the Sorority GPA up. You see, if a sorority as a collective does not maintain a certain GPA level that is dictated by the college, then they will lose their charter. One of the things sisters look for in prospective pledges was their academic history and a pledge could lose her spot if her grades suffered during pledging. That is another reason why your Big has to check in with you every day. To make sure your grades don’t drop during the process.
I got along with mostly all of my fellow pledges, except for Jenny. Jenny seemed to be the one out of step not just with me, but with everyone else. She would always show up late for our pledge class meetings with our “mom” and then make excuses. She would lag behind during functions and she never pulled her weight. For some reason, I seemed to be the target for her dislike. She always seemed to blame me when she got in trouble, like my doing well was a personal affront to her. The other pledges noticed it and rallied behind me, which further irritated her.
Things came to a header during the biggest pledge task we had during our 6 weeks. All of the pledges from all the sororities on campus had to put on a skit to be performed in front of the entire Greek community at school. The TPO sisters took this competition very seriously as your reputation as an organization is based on how well your pledges perform and are viewed by the other Greeks. Our pledge class, The Phi Class, had to come up with the skit, make the costumes, direct the music and perform the skit…and we had to have the finished product by the 5th pledge week.
As you can imagine, a lot of work went into this production. We met with our Mom and decided to do a skit about a pledge who tried to trick her sisters that she was too injured to participate in a pledge function, but then realizes she tricked herself out of a party. I suggested the idea and was inspired by the Little Rascals episode, Fishy Tales, where Alfalfa tries to convince Butch that he is hurt and can’t fight. There were 5 of us who knew the episode and thought it was a great idea and a good twist on pledging. Everyone except Jenny that is who thought the idea was stupid. Well she was outvoted and our version of “Pledging Tales” was born.
We worked hard on our sets, making one look like a dorm bedroom and the other one our sorority house. We even got one of the old mattresses from the TPO House and cut a hole into it. We decided that three of us would be the “Sisters” looking for the “Injured Pledge” there would be the pledge in the bed, and the other pledges comforting her. We voted and I was elected the “injured pledge” who would be in bed with my “hurt leg.”
I can’t stress to you the importance of this event for the sorority. Pledges had been known to be kicked out for messing up during the show. TPO was fiercely protective of its reputation and by the time the show came around we knew we were almost finished with pledging. None of us wanted to lose our spot or let the sisters down. All of the late night tasks, daily treks and activities had really made us want to be a part of TPO, myself especially! I didn’t want to let anyone down, least of all my pledge class.
So the day of the show arrives and we get to the Student Union to get ready and Jenny is nowhere to be found. The Sisters were furious, but we were a bit relieved because she had been acting really weird during the last couple of rehearsals. But because by this time we are supposed to be a unit, they told us that if ANYTHING went wrong with the skit that we would all be kicked out and there would be NO PHI PLEDGE CLASS! We knew they were deadly serious as they had done that to the Sigma Pledge Class. We had learned that lesson during one of our study sessions and we were terrified to have history repeat itself.
We got ourselves into position for the opening curtain. Since I was to play the injured pledge, I was wearing a long gold nightgown that came to just below my knees that had the State College logo in brown across my chest. I was wearing thick, yellow wool socks that came up to my knees so no part of my leg was showing. I got settled into the bed and put my right leg into the hole in the mattress. My entire calf up to my knee was in the hole and I realized we had never practiced with my leg in the hole before. I couldn’t move my leg; the opening was just big enough for my leg but not much wiggle room at all. I was good and stuck. I was a little nervous about that but I knew it was a short skit, and I wouldn’t have to have my leg trapped for hours so I relaxed. My “hurt leg” was stuffed with socks and newspaper to look like a real leg and my hair was pulled up into a blond ponytail, minimal makeup. As the curtain went up, I affected a painful look and prepared for my lines.
As soon as the curtain went up, I felt something brush my leg under the mattress. At first I thought it was just a cobweb or piece of the mattress and didn’t pay it much attention. Then as I began to say my first line, I felt the top of my yellow wool sock under the mattress get pulled out from under my nightgown. Someone was pulling my wool sock down very slowly and I couldn’t do a thing about it. I began to sweat but miraculously I was still able to say my next line. By the time I finished that line, my sock was completely off below, revealing my bare foot with metallic blue nail polish. All of us pledges had gone for pedicures right before the skit and I chose blue because it was our sorority color.
Well after I get a pedicure my feet are really sensitive and to add to that, the woolen sock had my foot nice and warm. As I began my next line, I felt something light and feathery tickle the instep of my foot then work its way to the base of my toes. Good Lord I was dying inside. I knew I couldn’t break role or I would ruin the skit and I didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize my pledge class. But finally the feathery tickling stopped and I stared to relax again.
No sooner had I taken a deep breath but then I felt something hard begin to tickle in between my big toe and work its way through all ten toes. My face was bright red and sweat began to trickle down between my breasts, dampening my nightgown. It seemed to go on for hours, the moving back and forth over my foot and toes. With each tickle, my toes and foot got more and more sensitive. I was beginning to see stars with the effort of trying to keep still and stay focused. Just when I thought I would break, the tickling stopped and I breathed again. Good God how long was this skit? Wasn’t it almost over by now? Those were the thoughts that kept running through my mind.
As we began the final lines and I felt the end was in sight and I could survive this, I felt a hand grab my ankle and then fingernails begin tickling my heel and then working harder up to the base of my toes. I was sweating in earnest now and my face getting redder. As the mysterious fingers worked the bottom of my foot they glided over the tops of my toes and began to slowly and thoroughly tickle the top of my foot. Back and forth, back and forth nails trailed over the sensitive top of my foot gently scraping from the toes to my ankle. I tried to kick out and wiggle my toes, but the hand just gripped my ankle tighter and tickled me with even more feverous vigor. It was driving me mad!
I thought I would scream I wanted to laugh so hard!!!! I knew the show was almost done and it took all my effort to stay in character. Then the hand moved up my calf and tickled harder getting up to the back of my knee. Well I couldn’t stay quiet at that. Thankfully it was the end of the show and I was supposed to be crying at missing the party. I muffled those “cries” with laughter and my entire nightgown was drenched in sweat!!!
I was never as relieved as when I could take my leg out and take my bow! I had one bare leg and my nightgown clung to me. Ironically enough our skit took first place and our status as sisters was secured!
It was discovered that Jenny had snuck underneath the stage. The mattress had been placed over the trap door on the stage and she decided to use the entire version of the Little Rascals episode to get me to break and ruin the show, thereby getting my entire pledge class kicked out of the sorority.
Thankfully her plan backfired and the sisters let us decide Jenny’s fate. We voted her out of the pledge class and word spread of her attempted sabotage so she never received another bid from any other sorority on campus!!! She was shunned by the entire Greek community and was never invited to any Greek party for the rest of her college career!!!
So that is the story of how someone tried to get me kicked out of TPO. Thankfully it was a short skit or I don’t know how long I would have lasted getting tickled like that! Hope you enjoyed my tale.
