Just Can't Stay Away...

Recently I took a road trip with three close friends up to Colby College and back. As we head towards Maine, I experienced all matter of things I have truly missed as a result of living in New York. Clean air, for one. Second of course was riding in a car that played American music and didn’t have a meter running. And then there were the sights! I saw the color green, such as one might find in trees and grass, and then if I looked straight up, or to the left, or to the right, I could see here, there, and everywhere that often-elusive natural wonder, the sky. (Now don’t fret fellow New Yorkers, we have our natural wonders too! For nothing can produce such a sunset as a terrific layer of smog strewn across a polluted skyline.)

As we drew closer and closer to our Alma Mater, the four of us began to feel a great deal of excitement that could only be matched by our ample trepidation. Would it be just like old times? Would our ID cards work and our favorite college foods and beer games be ready and waiting? Would we be treated like world explorers back from the great beyond, otherwise known as the “real world,” a world apparently distinct from that which is inhabited by all those twenty-two and below? When we told people what we were up to these days, would they look back at us in adulation and applaud how “real” we really are? (And on a more personal note, would my erroneous “I freelance” answer be correctly misinterpreted as respectable employment, such that I wouldn’t have to hide in a corner and cry, comforted only by a constant supply of booze?) We could only hope.

When we got to campus, it was just like old times. The 80’s-themed party we were headed to had just been broken up by campus security, and in the senior apartment building, fist-sized holes decorated the walls of hallways that still had that quintessential Colby hallway smell, and the toilets still flushed so violently you had to plug your ears and run for cover. And then, of course, there were my friends.

My Colby friends, those I traveled with and those I visited, are quite simply some of the best people on this earth, and I am putting it mildly. Basically, my friends are better than your friends, so deal with it. Seeing these amazing people was refreshing and invigorating and fantastic; and yet, the constant reminders that my time on campus had come and gone were plentiful and disconcerting. I no longer had a home base, people had studying to do when I wanted to play, and ultimately there was not enough time to catch up and far too much time to linger and feel awkward in a place that had been, but was certainly no longer, my home.

By the time Sunday rolled around, we were ready to go. It was sad to leave our beautiful campus behind, and sadder still to say good-bye to friends that in the coming months or years will also graduate and disperse themselves along these continental states and beyond. I took great comfort in those I traveled with, however. Colby might not be my home, but my friends are still my friends.

Indeed, road trips are great because they’re a time of intense bonding, a time to learn important facts about your friends you’d never know otherwise. For example, a road trip is the perfect and perhaps only time when it is appropriate to ask not only “If you could have sex with one celebrity, who would it be?” but the follow up: “If, in order to have sex with said celebrity, you had to first kill a baby that you were 90% sure would die the next day anyway, would you do it?” Here’s an example of something I learned: If Matt had to be killed by a wild animal, he would wish to be ravaged by a pack of wolves. I didn’t know that. Julie, on the other hand, would choose to be nibbled to death by a giraffe (which we all agreed was pretty lame). Max proposed death by piranha, which I think says a lot about him – probably all you'd ever need to know. As for me, everyone knows the best way to die is to be savagely ripped apart by a 300-pound grizzly bear. I mean, really.

Post-graduation, some things do remain the same. My friends remain as wonderfully perverted and flatulent as ever (yes, that’s right, be jealous). We still laugh about the same stupid stuff, like the time Matt and Max bought a bunny at a pet store and killed it and then turned it into soup and ate it. Or that time Emily got ass-drunk and outran two Waterville police officers before passing out in her dorm room. But now there are new things to experience and laugh about. It’s like how Julie became a high school teacher, but she’s still Julie, which means sometimes she goes to school dressed as a pirate. And thank God for that.