Name: Sarah Safuto
Nickname: “Saz”
Age: 21
Year: Senior
Major: History!
Hometown: Glendale, California
Relationship Status: Dating myself
Sunlight danced like golden coins across the simple brown bench on which she sat. I, a bright-eyed, fresh-blooded emerging journalist, filled with the wonder and expectation of youth sat beside this true beacon of mystery and wisdom. The warmth of the California spring air floated through the quad, filling us with the scents and noises of a busy college campus in the heat of a Thursday afternoon. Staring at the enigma I called my interviewee, I turned directly to my notes and began rapidly firing off questions. With a gentle ease, she stared off into the void of her lifetime and recounted the juiciest of deets for which I could impart to my faithful readers. “So tell us about yourself Sarah?” I managed to sputter out.
“I’m definitely somewhere between a really peppy, always jumping around, little red-headed princess, and the most pessimistic person you’ve ever met.”
I gazed at her multifaceted perfection. She was the pinnacle of excellence.
“What is an ideal date like for Sarah Safuto?”
With this question her eyes sharpened, she had thought countless hours and innumerable days about this very question. Perhaps the ghosts of bad dates past drove her to this very idea.
She spoke carefully:
“Ok so, we’re walking – where are we walking, I don’t know? — a park, we’re walking in a park, and we see an overturned trashcan, and we flip it over, me and my date… and there is a kitten, a perfectly safe and cute ragdoll kitten, and we pick up the kitten and underneath it is a check for 1 million dollars. I take the check. I take the cat. I leave the boy.”
Her charm seemed to radiate from her smile and voice, I could not help but feel my body convulsing in hearty laughter at such a captivating and intriguing notion.
I faced my list of questions once more to ask the serious “campus cutie” questions.
“So rumor has it you are a descendant of Aphrodite herself. Can you confirm or deny this statement?”
Her response:
“Ooo well, without signing any papers, I can confirm that I am, in fact, part of her family tree. Haha I wonder who started those rumors, goodness you tell a few people a little secret and eventually everyone knows you’re related to the goddess of love.”
“My sources also say that Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift have all written their greatest love songs about you. Can you confirm or deny this statement?”
She gazed at me in utter amusement. “Oh yes, I can definitely confirm all of that, every single artist and album, I’ve had a hand in all of them. I’m a busy girl…”
The information I was attaining was decent, but I was just barely scratching the surface of the puzzle of a human being that sat so collected and calm beside me. I must know more.
“So Sarah what are qualities you look for in a significant other?”
“Funny. People who don’t make me laugh are incredibly uncomfortable. They need to be good to waiters, that’s a really big deal. They need to be good to children too, which is weird because I don’t particularly love children, but if a guy felt the same way I wouldn’t really like him. They need to dress nicely. Love a man in a suit.”
“And quirkiest personality trait?” I said with a girlish giggle
“Oh God I’m terrified of elevators and scared of any type of embarrassment, just the thought of it makes me so anxious. As for quirks, I tend to use my hands a lot when I’m talking. I guess that’s my Italian side.”
Sarah was the culmination of all the greatness in the world. It was time to ask the real hard-hitting questions: “Celebrity crush?!” I blurted out
“Eddie Redmayne.”
No this could not be. How could she so quickly utter the name of my most beloved fantasy British husband. It was all too overwhelming, it was then that I realized that Sarah was not like the rest of us. She was something more. She did not strive in the shadow of beauty and perfection like the rest of us lowly women. She was beauty and perfection incarnate. The master of feminine willpower, the possessor of abounding knowledge. I asked another question:
“So tell us about your experience with being a writer for ‘Her Campus’ and the Weekly? What drew you into the world of journalism?”
“I always wrote. Like as a kid, I wrote a lot in my diary. I believed that someone else, somehow, was going to read my stories.”
“So Sarah,” I bravely asked. “What’s on the horizon for you? Do you have any departing words from a Senior to a Protégée?”
She glanced upwards at the shading trees which were spangling light upon the pavement. I could not know, nor could ever know, what machinations were turning and turning in her head. She breathed in the afternoon musk and with willful eyes she spoke this message:
“Hopefully everything! Hopefully different horizons. I want to go out there and do everything. Drink champagne, see hot French men, eat great food, and just live! As for departing words, enjoy the time that you have now, and don’t spend it worrying about the past or the future. Just live for the moment!
And with those undying words, I concluded my interview and sit tirelessly now at my keyboard writing out the experience of meeting Sarah Safuto, the masterpiece lady I am honored to call my friend and Big.