From Her Perspective

Okay, so I am sitting in my apartment, beer sweating in my hand (yes, I only use one hand to type, you wanna fight about it?) and my best college friends just left my house a few minutes ago.  And no, I’m not talking about the few randoms that happen to still live nearby; we had a reunion of sorts this weekend, so friends from across the globe (or at least the greater Northeast) convened at my apartment to carouse like old times.  Most married, some divorced, some with kids, and I am sitting here thinking to myself about whether or not I ever thought I would get to this point in my life.  Fine, yes, it is midnight and I started drinking eight hours beforehand, so maybe things are slightly less clear than they normally are, but really?  I think I am seeing things almost completely as they are, and if I were eighteen years old once again, I would be shocked beyond belief at how things turned out.

I think the most disconcerting thing is that we are all leading completely normal lives.  Even the ones who left to find their fame and fortune are decidedly commonplace.  None of us bore nine children at once.  None of us are followed by the paparazzi day and night (could that be because we never leave our houses – choosing oppositely to reach staggering levels of drunkenness in the comfort of our own homes?) and none of us won any sort of Nobel Prize.  Of course, nobody is exactly living on the street, but the fact that I am sitting here on a Friday night (Saturday morning, to be exact, but again, I am entirely willing to fight you on this statement if you even hint about how lame it is), writing this article instead of raising hell, is slightly less than awesome.

Maybe it’s because I don’t really know anything about sports that I’m so often forced to delve into my personal life.  Maybe this week I’ll actually watch a Pats game in its entirety (actually, this is a lie.  I watched that playoff game last week from beginning to end, sober as a judge, and enjoyed it.  Possibly, it’s because I watched it with a bunch of chicks who were equally interested in the odd shininess of the suits the commentators wore as they were any sort of cool play in the game) and have something profound to say about that.  But, to be honest, this whole grownup thing is really giving me a kick in the crotch.  Fine, and the fact that all profundity probably flew out the window around the time my friends and I started reminiscing about how many bases we went to with Boy X, Boy Y and Boy Z (often the same person; I pray nobody I ever hooked up with reads these articles) in what dorm lounge.  But for real, what happened?  We swore up and down that we would never, ever lead the lives that our predecessors lived.  We would be the ones who broke the mold.  We would change the lives of the general populace forever.  Hell, I wore overalls in college to prove a point, dammit!  It wasn’t just because I had no fashion sense.  There was always something bigger on the horizon.

Granted, we all have things on the horizon now.  We’re getting married, we’re knocked up, we’re buying homes, we’re boning new guys in a way we never thought we would (EW!  I’m not talking about ass play, you are so gross).  Had I asked myself ten years ago (or eleven, as I was seventeen when I started college) about what I had planned for my future, I would say with much certainty that I would be living in New York, working for Vogue, and the only articles I would be writing would be about high fashion or high society.  Who would have thunk that my penchant for Labatt or wearing sweatpants would have interfered with this dream? 

It’s funny that I know I’ve alluded to this kind of thing before (I tried to figure out exactly when by going back in time though the archived Barstool issues, which then led me to my next set of articles, the top hottest cover models of all time, but that’s not until next time, so keep it in your pants, okay?) but I guess I’ve never tangibly felt it until now.  Did you ever think you’d be home on a Friday night with your fiancé, wife, or baby mama, changing diapers and drinking a fifth of Jack alone?  Probably not.  But then again, did you ever think that sleeping with the same person every night or cleaning spit up off of a baby’s face would ever bring you so much joy?  Probably not, either.  Anyway, I guess it’s inevitable that we all have to grow up in at least some aspects of our lives, so we may as well enjoy it.

This, of course, is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the relations I had in the student lounge with my next door neighbor or that my roommate didn’t enjoy losing her virginity in a hotel on the Canadian border to a farmer who had three teeth.  I only say what I say to illustrate a point.  Your college years aren’t the best years of your life, per se, but they’re certainly pretty hilarious.  Embrace them.  Be as botarded as possible.  Because you’ll inevitably look back on them in the comfort of your own home, baby in the crib, laundry in the dryer, and wish you had taken even better advantage than you had.