Thirtysomething

Implausible

I am a sentimental soul at heart. You wouldn't think it, but I am. I got the quarterly edition of my college's alumni bulletin and as usual, I flipped straight to the back. The back of each issue has news, births, deaths, marriages of alumni sorted by graduation year. I invariably alway look at this section and say, "Oh, so-and-so got married" or "So-and-so had a baby" or "So-and-so joined the priesthood". Well it is a Catholic college and all.

Anyway, it always makes me a little sad, because I think of the people that I used to know. And I think that's a sad term, "people I used to know." To be fair, I went to school at the kind of place that if I saw any of these people "I used to know" on the street today, we'd squeal and hug and exchange storied. It was that kind of place--you just found kindred spirits there, even if you didn't stay in touch with them. There are few things that make me as nostalgic as college, and so the alumni journal puts me in that sort of mood.

In this particular edition, I learned that a former resident of mine had a baby, which seemed completely implausible to me, as I swear it was only yesterday that she was a freshman. Wasn't it only yesterday that a group of my residents came running to get me in the cafeteria, saying "You've got to come with us, there's something wrong with Jen"? And I ran back to our dorm and there she was, turning blue from throwing up all over the place, refusing to go to the hospital, because her father would kill her if he found out she was drunk. I held her hair and talked to her in soothing, calm words and finally she did go to the hospital. I felt in that moment more like a mother than I ever did anytime before or after that because I was worried about her as though she was an extension of myself. She wound up being one of the residents I was most proud of, because she went from an awkward, whiney girl to a more mature and responsible version of herself within a year.

Now she's a mother. And I used to know her.

posted by DJ Heavy D @ 6:45 AM