Wapsi Square

Cassandra Siders

What is a Wapsi Girl?

After reading through all of the wonderful postings in The Wapsi Girl Project and being inspired by each and every one of them in small ways, I really wanted to throw in my own twist. There’s a lot of mention given to the girls having strength, heart, good attitudes, intelligence, and all-around spunkiness, but the thing that spoke to me most was balance. It seemed, generally speaking, that some of the fantastical adventures that take place are tossed aside as just interesting fluff material, but it plays a very big part in who these girls are. The fact that Monica can teleport to a place that basically floats between dimensions then waltz into her local coffee shop as if nothing happened is truly astounding, yet she continually pulls it off with hardly a second thought. Looking at it in the grand scheme, that makes her a bit of a freak – what normal person would act like that? But that’s not what I take from it. What I see is that no matter what ridiculously crazy and absurd things she, and all of the other girls, go through, she can still set aside the stress (and the weirdness) to just relax with her friends. They all keep a very beautiful balance between something most people would be sent to the psych ward over and just chilling out, watching movies. They keep up their responsibilities, their friendships, their outside interests and then go on wacky adventures all while having enough energy to reflect on what’s happening and learning from their experiences.

It’s super-human and not something anyone from the 4th wall could handle, but it’s worth learning from and applying to ourselves. We may not be able to *poit* to remove our bras at the end of the day, or have a dog that can literally understand the things we say, or be able to visit a library of everything ever written and unchanged by time. What we can do is set aside everything that equates to that in our lives to have a quiet dinner with a friend we haven’t talked to in a long time, or go for a long walk without worrying about every tiny thing that doesn’t work the way we want it to. Being a Wapsi girl means remembering the truly important things, here and now, while simultaneously handling the huge stress involved with something that may be bigger than ourselves. It’s learning to create that balance between hectic and serene because while we all have to deal with the hectic, stressful things, it’s taking the time to stop and really smell the roses that means the most. Wapsi girls are strong and smart enough to take care of the big things, caring and open enough to remember the small things, and understand the importance of balancing them together, not throwing themselves at one and disregarding everything else.