Category: family / friends Page 18 of 27

For a variety of reasons, I have been particularly reminiscent about college of late. Last week I went to lunch with some co-worker friends and walked to an overlook on the campus of University of Cincinnati and I swear it about made me choke. All these kids (at what point did I start referring to them as kids?) were walking around wearing whatever they wanted and doing whatever they wanted. I was gagging on the envy working its way up from inside me.

This weekend my sister and her man made a trip to visit my brother for a birthday party. I wanted desperately to go with them but our schedules didn’t quite work. Turns out that may have been a good thing. My sister said her friends partied until after 5 am. She had to crawl into her car sometime after 3 and just fall asleep – evidence we’re related! She and her man passed my brother at noon on Saturday walking down the street with a blown up raft, even though he couldn’t explain why. Now, to be fair, it was Mill Fest weekend and there were undoubtedly many-kegged parties going on. And yet, I think questioning the raft is fair.

While hearing about my brother’s antics, many of which cannot be posted in lest parental-type folks happen upon this post, made me a little concerned for his liver, I was mostly more sad about missing college. I am told by the likes of Wonder Boy that not everyone has this same sentimental approach to college and, in fact, I think he thinks I am a little (more) nerdy for it. Ah well. It’s not college as much as the time of my life. After all, I don’t wax pretty about my time in grad school very often.

In a possible attempt to depress myself, I am going to launch into some good old Ohio University stories. Some of this was at the suggestion of Becca whose eyes about feel out of her head when I told her about my college roommate, whom we shall refer to as V.

As I sit here typing away at my computer, and be it known that I am a very loud and fast typist, I am reminded of the noise V’s toenails would make as she walked across our linoleum down room floor. She grew her toenails out as long as possible and always had them painted some pearlescent tone. Long toe nails are nasty, by the way, but pearlescent, clicking toe nails are so much worse. When V would break a toenail, as one is prone to do when their toenails are over an inch long, she would save the broken off bit in a small box. She had an entire box of broken off toenails in her desk.

V was big on saving bits of her past. That was all fine, until her maybe boyfriend maybe ex-boyfriend had to cut off his mullet hair so he could get promoted at his pizza joint. He mailed the mullet hair to her and she sewed into a heart-shaped pillow of her own making. It was cheap fabric and she didn’t sew it very tight so little mullet hairs were always busting out. She drew on it with a marker, something like “V X J” and always had it on her bed.

V knew mullet boy from her high school days. In high school V had been the president of V-squared, which stood for Virgins Forever. She got kicked out of both her post and the club her senior year when she and mullet boy consummated their love.

V was a good one-year roommate for me. She taught me a lot of about What Not to Do and how to have fun. And believe it or not, she really was fun.

Dear Liver,

You are the no-longer-functioning liver of Jake who has drank beers gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the party you died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost beers, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of good times.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
Jake