...Then Comes the Baby in the Baby Carriage

I've grown to loathe my college alumni letters, filled with updates of engagement and marriage announcements. Call me the wedding scrooge. Most shocking of all in last month's letter was the new category, birth announcements. Imagine my surprise to learn someone I once knew very well has a new bundle of joy.

Sophomore year of college, if you came to my dorm room any given Wednesday afternoon, you would find my friends and I in intense study mode. Why so hard at work? It wasn't our exceptional work ethic that kept us from slacking. Any other day, this lag in the afternoon would be reserved for a nap after class, vegging out in front of the TV, or ridiculing peers behind their back in the cafeteria as they walked by, but Wednesday was a different story. It was what got us through the week. Yes, perhaps you're familiar with the scene: house party in a dark, dingy smoke-filled basement where the cheap keg beer never stops flowing.

A girl who lived in the room next to my good friend decided to befriend us when she saw or more likely of the two, heard us stumble home into the wee hours week after week. She clearly realized how awesome we were and wanted "in." The more, the merrier. From then on, we made it a point to invite her to go out with us every Wednesday. When she tried to tell us she had to study, being the good friends we were, we coaxed her out of it. One fateful Wednesday evening, she was nowhere to be found when we were ready to leave. Unusual for her, but not all that unusual considering the debauchery that took place in that house.

Come to find out the next morning, she'd gone home with a boy from her psych class, whom she'd never said one word to 11 hours prior to that. In fact, she'd never had a serious boyfriend before. If you really like a guy and your first encounter is the drunken hook-up, it can be treacherous territory, but we coached her through all the mind games, what to do next, inviting him to go to lunch, playing hard to get, etc. We were there for her when they had their first fight, amongst a number of all-important "firsts," and consoled her when he ran into trouble with the law. She gradually distanced herself from us slowly but surely, spending every waking minute with him. He did have a single dorm, after all! By the following Thanksgiving, they were engaged. That was pretty much the last we heard from her.

Anyway I was all too kindly reminded of that when I read her baby announcement. It saddened me to think of all the memories we shared before she ditched us for the boy. Resentment aside, I am still very happy for her and wish her the best (even though our credit went unacknowledged and unappreciated). Kidding...sort of. Congrats. :)