The Stories We Could Tell

My sister and I have been reminiscing about college the past couple days. It started with a conversation about boys we dated back then. But talking about that stuff led to so many other memories.

Like the time my friend Sean (who only lasted at my college for one semester because he was WAY too liberal for my small southern baptist college) hitchhiked from Florida to our college campus to hang out one weekend. While regaling me with stories of his trip, I was horrified and when he was ready to hitch back a few days later, I drove him five hours south to Macon, Georgia so he wouldn’t have to hitch the whole way back.

There was the time my other Florida pal wanted to go visit his girlfriend for the weekend but had no transportation. I told him I’d take him, and so we hopped in my car on a Friday morning. We drove non-stop from NC to the tip of FL to his parents house (they were away for the weekend). I crashed in a spare bedroom while Jeff threw a party for his local pals. The next morning I woke up fresh as a daisy and my hungover pal Jeff slept nearly the whole way back to campus – another non-stop drive (about 12 hours, I think). I was back that night and promptly went out dancing with some other friends. My payment for the trip? Gas money and a beautiful acoustic guitar. The following semester I took an Acoustic Guitar class, but years later gave the guitar to my other college friend Mark who went into Youth Counseling after graduation and wanted to teach wayward kids how to play guitar to try to keep them off the streets.

There was the time my boyfriend Steve was using a juice glass as a spit cup one day at lunch (he dipped tobacco). The glass was nearly full (gross, I know). My roommate walked into the cafeteria and joined us, and promptly picked up the glass thinking it was Coke. I don’t think I need to go on with this story – you get the point.

The brief period of time when I paid my friends to do stupid stuff – one example being that I’d coat a piece of chicken with a thick layer of salt and pay my friend Kevin $10 to eat it.

My freshman year’s social life was paid for by cleaning my friend John’s apartment after his rousing parties. They had a three room house off-campus and he’d pay me $30 to clean it out every Saturday morning. Or he’d give me $10 to do his laundry (I’d do mine at the same time, thus never having to pay for my laundry). Or $10 to take his car to the local car wash. He became such a good friend that one night he showed up at my dorm window, crying, devastated that he wouldn’t be able to graduation because he was failing a class (it was the last semester of his senior year). He was drunk, and told me he was thinking about suicide. I grabbed my wallet, and we proceeded to drive his truck around for hours while he cried and lamented and grieved over the shame he’d bring his family. He finally passed out in the back of the truck at 6 a.m. and I took him back home and got him into bed. The next day we met up, I helped him edit his final paper that was due before exams. He got a B, and he graduated 3 weeks later.

I had two friends that got into a vicious argument over supposed cheating, friends interfering and various other things. They were “the” couple though, and I went to bat for them. I went to John’s house (where Kevin was fuming) and talked Kevin into talking to Cee and working things out. A year or so later they were married, and as of today they have 3 kids and are happily living in NC.

Then there was the time that Kevin and my other friend James (we called him Cal Frosty) put a dead fox in my car. Gross, but funny, too.

I remember having to go to Arby’s late at night to study for exams because the campus library closed at 11 p.m., until one semester I got so mad that I stood up on a table in the cafeteria at dinner and announced to the entire place that there would be an in-library protest that night. A couple hundred showed up, the library couldn’t close, and it forced school policy to change and allow later library hours so students would have a place to study without having to go off-campus.

I remember breaking into the on-campus chapel and listening to Kirby play the wedding march on the organ in a minor key. I remember when Rex proposed to Beth at the Homecoming Game my freshman year. I remember when I asked Flounder to give my intro speech when I ran for Student Secretary and he went from being an outsider on campus to being the best speech of the day and a little more respected by the popular crowd. I remember hours and hours of watching the guys play Home Run Derby while chilling on the steps of Lutz-Yelton dorm. I remember the bbq at Noel’s house where we put a single potato chip in one of the burgers just to see who’d get it. I remember watching the original Fox lineup in our lobby on Sunday nights – shows included Simpsons, America’s Most Wanted, In Living Color and Married with Children (in their infancy). I remember the Berlin Wall coming down while I was getting ready to go out dancing that night. I remember the Alpha Wombeth Society parties (that was our fake fraternity on campus my junior and senior years).

I loved my four years of college. Can you tell?