Love Letter

Dear College,

 I was just thinking about you today, you know, a little reminiscing about how, at this time of day while we were hanging out, I’d just be dragging myself out of bed. Instead, I’m in the midst of making edits to a Powerpoint Presentation I’ve been working on since 8am. Sigh. Remember when Powerpoints were just for professors? To be fair, I once wanted to BE a professor, so I can’t give them, or you, too much crap.

 Remember how I got lost on my way to English 101 that first week? It was so cliché – this newbie freshman wandering around campus in the mid-august heat – walking briskly but not running (wouldn’t want to look like a loser), while silently freaking out that I was going to be late. When I finally arrived at the correct building, I flung myself inside the classroom to the interested looks of everyone else in the room, and tried tononchalantly take a seat while brushing away sweat beads on my upper-lip. So much for playing it cool. Oh, college, you must have been laughing your ass off at me.

 School started back this week. We just finished putting a lookbook together at my job featuring a bunch of home decor items supposedly perfect for that college dorm-room makeover. We’ve got leopard print bean-bag chairs, rainbow shag pillows, canvas prints that say “Love”, “Inspire” and “LMAO”, the latterof which would have been just a big ol’ misspelling in my day.

 Then you get down to business with important items like dry-erase boards for the outside of your door. Ya know, so you can give your roomies a heads-up when you’ll be back late. Or, in our case, start hate-filled ranting wars with the guys down the hall.

 “Turn down your mother effing music! If I have to hear the baseline from Metallica’s Welcome Sandman one more time, I’m going to slap your face off your face!”

Remember when we hated Jim and Ryan from next door? We even complained about them to the Resident Advisor! Hahahah, I know, right?! He was really a total goober. Seriously, College, how could you have put him in charge of a bunch of rowdy 18 year olds? I mean, silly RA should have known that after a few angry dry-erase-board-exchanges, we’d work things out in your regular college way. By making out with each other. But I will give that dude props for helping us dispose of our suicidal fish. To this day I can’t figure out how that little guy managed to lodge himself in the air filter.

 Hey, College? Um, while I’m thinking about it, would you mind keeping a few things under-wraps for me? Like, how my roommates and I choreographed that dance to a Britney Spears song and then tried to perform it on the dance floor at The Sports Column? See, we’d been pretty inundated with those 90’s movies like “She’s All That” where the charactersburst into simultaneous booty shaking and hip grinding during a designated song, and it like, totally revved up the party. Just don’t tell anyone that we got confused looks and were basically booed out of the bar. Oops, we did it again.

Also, let’s just refrain from telling my parents about what that art teacher told me my freshman year. Ya know, about how I was lucky I had talent because otherwise I would have flunked out of class from talking too much. I’m pretty sure my parents thought that those immature Chatty-Cathy tendencies were limited to High School only.

 And for my sanity, could we lock the vault on discussing my job with the survey service and the other one where I had to sort through slides of Dermatological oddities. Honestly, to this day, thinking about how miserable I was at both of those places of employment still gives me a stomachache. Please don’t ever make me call 14 year old boys and ask them what their favorite X-Box game is! Or lethargic 50+ males asking about their diabetes medication! And, please, if you ever loved me at all, don’t remind me about the horrific images of genital herpes that I was forced to label and file. I can forgive, but I’ll never forget.

Speaking of unpleasant College memories, remember the Green House? Don’t play dumb with me, I know your skin is crawling just thinking about it. See, my husband and I just moved into our first house a few months ago, and one of the annoying things we’ve had to deal with is bugs. Stupid ants swarming the deck, and spiders building exaggerated webs on every bush in sight. But the worst of the worst, are the Silverfish. YOU know the ones. They haunted that green house we lived in our senior year. I shiver to recall the way we would suddenly see this 3” long critter with it’s million+ legs scurrying over the wall. Or that time Dana found one in her laundry basket…deep breaths…trying not to hyperventilate.

 That house was such a dirty wilderness. One time I found 3 DIFFERENT kinds of bugs in my bed after pulling back the covers. Are you kidding me? Look, College, I know you were trying to throw a learning curve our way, but could you have stuck with just one species? And you really crossed the line with the snake.

 There I was, minding my own business, heading to the basement to throw a load of wash in, and what happens to catch my attention? Something twitching on the floor. Just  a lil’ ol’ garden snake creeping his way behind the dryer. Thanks for at least keeping that one in the basement. Oh, the horror.

 But, enough about me. How are you, College? How’s life treating you? I heard you received some accolades recently.  May I offer my congratulations? I’m impressed you’ve kept up such a stellar reputation! I mean, I’m not surprised. I’ve been singing your praises ever since graduating. Though, let’s be honest, I sure can’t party like I used to.

 If we were still hanging out, it would be cup night at the Q Bar tonight. Bring your trashy, plastic red cup from the previous week, and refill it for $.25 all night. Now THAT’S a bargain! Then we’d sink the rest of our quarters into darts, which I really only played so I could flirt with my now husband.

 Thanks for that, by the way, College. I really appreciate you introducing the two of us. I know that it’s not always reasonable to meet the person you’re going to marry while in college. I mean, at the time you’re priorities are a bit skewed and you still barely know what kind of person you want to be when you grow up. But, we were lucky. Your charming midwestern campus, lax underage drinking laws and enticing beer specials were enough to bring the two of us together. And then hard work, dedication and a lot of love kept us together. Sorry, I can’t give you all the credit.

 Anyway, I just wanted to say, hi, and that I think of you fondly every now and again. You were pretty fantastic during those 4 years, and sometimes I still wish we were close. Like on a Saturday morning after imbibing too heavily the night before. You would keep my head from feeling like it was being trampled by a herd of buffalo. You’d serve me up some frozen burritos and put me sweetly back to sleep until the nightmare passed. And then you’d ring me up and tell me that that it was $2 You Call It night at the Airliner and I’d better get my ass outta bed and meet you for a drink.