Quote:
Originally Posted by Zillini
How could I forget phone duty and wake up duty? Each active living in the house had an assigned code, like morse code. When they got a call on the house phone or a visitor you had to buzz their code. Long, long, short, short or whatever.
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We still used the buzz system in the late '90s. Mine was long long long short. I never minded being phone dog (doing phone duty) because then I got the inside scoop on things. We had a board in an alcove in the entryway with everyones names on hooks and a little round tag that was white on one side (which meant you were in) or blue on the other (which meant you were out). That way you could look up and see if if the member was in before buzzing (that is, if they remembered to flip their tag - most didn't). It was fun to come home and see a little message stuck on your hook. Then we had an "all-house" buzz (hold down the button for about 20 seconds) to call everyone for a meeting, announcement or serenade)
We still did a lot of singing and serenading in my chapter, too. We always sang Kappa Grace in the stairway before meals and the door to the dining room didn't open until our House Mother was standing there. She was very big on teaching us proper etiquitte and I know how to "correctly" pass a water pitcher and not to "divorce" the salt and pepper.
When they had "open" parties, Fraternities would stop by every sorority and give a stack of copied invites to whomever answered the door. The theory was you had to have an invite to get in the party, but if you waited long enough or knew someone in the fraternity, you could usually get in.
More fun were the fraternity date parties/formals where they came and personally serenaded each girl who was invited. Some chapters had "their" serenade song that would get requested whenever they came to visit. I remember Pi Kapps did "The Fishy Song" (all the little fishies do the hootchie kootchie dance). Nothing like seeing 30 semi-drunk fraternity men dancing around to a preschooler's song. We were always requested to sing "Legs" and a few other unmentionable songs. I hope they still do as much serenading now as they did when I was in school 10 years ago. It was always so much to hear "So-and-so is serenading!" yelled down the halls and run down to the formal liv or dining room for the songs.