Like the good American and strong supporter of the music industry I am, I watched the Grammys last Sunday night. And because my role model and moral compass, Taylor Swift, was performing first, I decided to put my homework on hold (I’m kidding, it’s been on hold the last three weeks) to watch what would undoubtedly be an exciting and intellectually stimulating performance.
Sadly, I was dismally disappointed.
I spent the first half of the song trying not to look directly at the creepy circus performers prancing around Taylor Swift to avoid having nightmares about giant bunnies and clowns. What upset me the most, however, was the low blow that T-Swift shot at her most recent ex in the form of mimicking a British accent during the part of the song where an ex-boyfriend begs her to take him back.
Normally I love hearing people talk loudly and crudely about their ex’s because I greatly enjoy hearing details about other people’s personal lives, especially if I barely know the person in question.
However, lately I found that there is such a thing as talking too much and in too much detail about your ex. I want to know how you felt after the breakup, not explicit complaints about your sex life.
My treasured friend Taylor Swift seems to be taking the “let me tell you about every flaw and minor disagreement in our relationship” to the next level. I’m all for divulging every secret about your relationships to the general public, but there’s a difference between letting people know you broke up and letting people know you broke up and it was entirely his fault because he didn’t deserve you and didn’t care enough about your feelings and so that’s why you’re writing a song with his name not-so-discreetly thrown in the chorus.
Most students at New Trier don’t have the connections or the power to make a Billboard Top 100 song about their ex (if you ever have the urge to write a song about your ex, I urge you to serenade your ex with it while following them around during passing periods). However, they do have the connections and the power to spread how their ex-girlfriend cheated on them with her second cousin.
After about the eighth grade, relationship fights on Facebook have become scarce except for the seventh graders in my Sunday school class that I friended against my better judgment. Luckily, I have discovered many, many other nooks and crannies throughout the school where people will colorfully, and sometimes quite originally, insult their ex’s. For example, scribbled on the back of the girls bathroom door, “he has the personality of a strangled blowfish.”
I’ve learned that the best way to find out information is not to discreetly move closer to people gossiping in the girls bathroom, (most people assume I’m either plotting ways to steal their makeup, or trying to wash my hands in the same sink as them) but to wait patiently until the breakup has become public knowledge and people will talk loudly about it in the P stairwell, the hallways, or the English Annex.
Sadly, by this point the story usually has been largely exaggerated and what started out as, “he told her he’d take her to Prom but broke up with her anyway” turns into, “he killed a man and hid him in her garage so she dumped him.”
I’m not saying stop talking about your ex. However, calling your ex a jerk or a dweeb (the actual names you would call your ex have been censored so as to not corrupt young minds) will only make you look like the real jerk or dweeb. If you tell the breakup as it actually happened, the rumor mill will eventually spin stories about your ex more horrifying than anything you could possibly come up with on your own.