Time of my life
When we were in high school, my best friend and I were derisive of our peers who considered high school the best time of their lives. Even though I enjoyed high school, I suppose I still haven't completely let go of that attitude. Now I find that I've become of those people who considers college her best years and talks about them more than I would like.
Over the past few months, I felt like I was getting closer to my coworker R. I wouldn't have said we were friends, but we've become a pair at work--someone to eat lunch with, see a movie with, and conspire about/against our coworkers. I know she is an opportunist--trading her husband for a boyfriend for another boyfriend--but I was still hurt tonight when she joined some of our other coworkers for fun and drinking between work and our office poker night and didn't tell me about it. While we were playing tonight she and W (another coworker) kept disappearing from the table together and I didn't catch onto the fact they were sneaking off to take sips from a flask and spike their sodas until W's wife clued me in. When the light dawned, I felt betrayed and left out.
I couldn't help but compare it to the nights in college when I had a seemingly endless number of friends to call and I never lacked for plans or fun.
posted by Angie @ 9:26 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Eh, I think you may be romanticizing college a bit. I certainly remember times being bored and not having people to do stuff with in college. But most of the time I had enough work and/or distractions to keep me busy.
On the other hand... I do tend to wax nostalgic about having everyone in such close proximity and having lots of free stuff to do on campus. Plus you could be a lot more spontaneous and people didn't plan things weeks in advance.
Angela,
You're a lunatic. College was horrific and so very not fun and certainly not close to the above description. Since we attended the very same over-rated sham of a school, let me color inside the lines on the realism of the sitch: In truth, folks were pithy and shallow and willing to sell you under a bridge for a stale Zagnut bar.
The life the Angineer is talking up was grim and grey and excruciating and more indicative of mid-communist Romania than anything depicted in her Pollyannaish world. Our life sucked.
Imagine a world of self-important, sado-masochistic professors giving out tracts of work to finish in two nights while you already had enough work to keep you busy until rapture. When you return home you find the wild-eyed roommate in the middle of the room riding a hooker and coked up out of his skull and puts on a show for you while you're in the midst of deciphering economic price theory homework. As you prep to slash your wrists because you just found out your girlfriend just left you for the bassist from Guns 'N Spittle you find renewed meaning in life. You don't slash your wrists because you then realize it can only get better once you submit your transfer applications. You get admitted to far better schools on transfer but then are hit with a crippling disease and decide to finish out the last three years in hell in ignominy, shame, and pain. You get out in the real world armed with a degree that you wish you didn't have and begin the long climb upwards fully well knowing that the 4 years spent were an absolute waste, spent with malefactors - most of whom if you met in an alley you'd gladly slash them into modern art. Welcome to college reality, 101.
Matt,
Thanks for dismissing my college experience. It is too bad that you didn't have roommates and friends like I did, because while Suzanne is right that my view is slightly romanticized, my college experience in no way resembled a Cold War eastern European country. And, as always, I would like to point out that you gave up your chance to have a Pollyanna girlfriend and get close to her great friends. ;)
Most of your friends were (and still are!) scary and a bit off kilter. I could write a book about the hang-ups of your roommates and it would be reproduced in "Psychology Today." I'm more than a little afraid of anyone who attends "theme-based" Halloween parties without lethal force being involved. My "Pollyannaish" girlfriend got replaced by the bane of my existence. Good times. Good times. In sum, if you have a high school kid that wants to go to Washington in Saint Louis, think better of it and send them ANYWHERE else. San Dimas Community College (Motto: We're high school... with ashtrays!) would be far more appropriate. Plus, go to a school that has sports you care about. Div III sucks. USC or Notre Dame or Michigan or anywhere else that actually matters would be more fun, probably less expensive and certainly less scarring. Plus, at these places you're far less likely to deal with so many of the egotistical, self-absorbed brats that I encountered on a daily basis. Real people are cool.
Matt,
What do you know about my former roommates? Nothing. End of discussion.
I'm sorry that you were miserable at WashU
and that you have made yourself even more unhappy by reflecting your feelings for C onto your experiences there, but there is no need to insist that everyone who went there hated it or to spread ugly stereotypes about WashU students.
I'm merely suggesting that most people were too self-absorbed to figure out what side of the street they were on most days. These aren't Vitamin "C" related, they are merely observations from living with a solid majority of people who were the sole inhabitant of planet "Me" for four years and continue to do so without any thought to the outside world. I was at an 'event' here in Chicago that cemented my feelings on these things. Most of the alumni that you meet are so full of themselves, you wonder if its an act. Then you realize that these people really believe all the junk their spewing. Having people associate me with folks as arrogant and bloated as them, it makes me wish I had gone anywhere else.
And you so can't defend some of your roommates. One whom was obsessed with 'Miller Time' from Joseph Teke's place had some disorders that really needed aid. And I refuse to start in on Lucas Skywalker for fear I may burst into flames.
Submitted for January 2007 Blogging for Books.
Post a Comment
<< Home