You had to be there

So, tomorrow my best friend Stephanie (we've known each other since we were 18, were sorority sistas and then roommates) are meeting some old college friends for brunch. These gatherings inevitably call to my mind myriad happenings from those wonderful days, which are now over a decade old. Most of them make me laugh uncontrollably, while others make me sigh with regret (not very many, thank God) or blush with embarrassment (there are lots of those).

In the midst of these memories, my husband usually asks me why I have such a strange smile on my lips...like I know a really good secret. I just shrug. Honestly, if I tried explaining what's so amusing, no one would get it anyway. As with many things in life, you just had to be there to see it for yourself.

For example, that old country song -- I think it's called Blue Bayou? -- came on the radio the other day. It was a song we played over and over again, singing at the top of our lungs, while driving around Greeley at all hours doing "drive bys." This is when you drive by a guy's house, apartment or workplace to see a) if they're there, b) who might be there with them and, c) if we can see in their windows to see what they're doing. I think the authorities call this stalking now.

Then there was the time Steph and I showed up at a house party and didn't know a soul...go inside to find the place packed like sardines, a wierd garage band playing in the tiny basement, and everyone passing around what we thought were cigars but turned out to be really enormous joints. We did not inhale. That's the same night there were two grown men, dressed as elves and wearing red/white striped Pippy Longstocking socks, taking turns pushing each other in a grocery cart around our apartment parking lot in the middle of the night. This is the same apartment where our roommate would hide her toilet paper (including the one currently being used) when she left because she didn't want us to use her bathroom when she was gone. She hid her telephone too.

Our friend Julie had this sketchy boyfriend for a while. He would get up at 3 a.m. every day to "go to work." He told her he was a stock broker and had to be at work so early because his clients were all from Asia and that's when their trading market opened. She was really impressed, until she found out he had a newspaper route. He also went to class and did homework...she found out later he was had been kicked out of the university months before and just kept going to class to hang out with his friends and pick up girls.

And I haven't even gotten to the funny stuff yet.

I could go on and on. It's all good, all worthy of the strange smile I have on my lips right now, and probably only hilarious if you were there and lived it. TTFN.