Remember When...

I got to Skype with Snickers for a delicious half hour this evening.

Snickers is one of my oldest friends. Not age-wise (she's fabulously thirty), but longevity-wise. She was one of the first people I met in college, and we lived together my sophomore year. In an apartment with six other girls. And two bathrooms. It was a year of Massive Inconvenience, but also fun in the way that "only when you're 19" is it fun to live with seven roommates in a cramped apartment. There was always something going on. Then again, there was always something going on.

Snickers migrated to San Francisco after circling the US for a few years (and the globe for a six month stint), which means that San Fran is now holding two of my most favorite people (Snap and Snickers) hostage. Which means, I suppose, that at some point I'll have to go and visit. Most likely, this is looking to be next year when Snickers gets married.

It was with a bit of sobriety that we realized we're coming up on the ten-year anniversary of September 11. It occurred the year we lived together, and we, along with our six other roommates, sat glued to the TV all day with friends and significant others crowded around us.

We transitioned to raucous laughter that I produced some pictures of us from college. It's amazing how much changes in ten years, especially when it comes to fashion.

"What are you wearing? Oh my God, it's that dress I made for costuming class. That thing was horrible."

"It wasn't that bad! It was...all asymmetrical, and...kind of like a towel. Or...a shower curtain. More like a shower curtain."

"Well here, you appear to be wearing..."

"...a terry-cloth strapless top."

"It's very fashion-y. This is also when you had the crazy stripes in your hair."

"OH and we both had eyebrow rings!"

"Very fashion-y."

"Very."

It's true. Snickers and I went down to the boardwalk one random September day and demanded that a grossly under-qualified teenager stick needles in our faces. Snickers was late to her psychology class that afternoon, and my mother blew a gasket when she found out about my new piercing. At Christmas that year when I was home, I fell asleep on the couch and woke up with an ornament jauntily hanging off of my eyebrow ring. I took it out shortly thereafter.

In recent years, Snickers and I, and our other friend, Princess, began emailing back and forth. It began when all three of us were inching out of weird situations we had found ourselves in, and just sort of never stopped. None of us had lost contact after college, but something about those emails roped us all in together and we're closer now, possibly, then we've been since we lived together ten years ago. The emails come nearly every day and are an endless source of laughter, support, and a sounding board for whatever we have going on in our lives.

I'm not sure if there's anything better than corresponding with someone who's known you for a long time. Who has seen you at your best--and worst--and still loves you and still thinks you're the bee's knees and worthy of all the great stuff life has to offer. And in whom you've seen so much change and yet still, somehow, the same core person she was when you first became friends so many years ago.

And, although it's relegated to Skype and email (Princess is in St. Louis these days), it's nearly the same as those weekly late-night drives to TCBY we took in college when we needed to get out of our rooms and into the night. Thankfully, Princess always had a car.

And, you know, it's great to be reminded of how fashion-y you were back then. Even while wearing a shower curtain. With asymmetrical hemlines.