The next step

Wedding season is upon me. I have one this weekend in Buffalo, NY for my dear friends Mindy and Bobby and then next weekend I fly down to southern Florida for the wedding of my college pal, Mike, and his fiance, Kathleen, who I have yet to meet.

It's really crazy...my friends getting married..especially my college friends. Most of my friends in Vermont are older so it's not as odd but my college friends, that throws me for a loop. I suppose part of it is because I remember them in the bubble that was 4 years at the University of Florida. We were all so young, so untouched, so lost in this world, so glad to have found each other.

I had this really special group of friends in college. A large group of us who found ourselves in the "anti-social" dorm on campus, thinking we'd never make a friend there...until we did. I remember meeting Mike at our dorm "orientation". He lived down the hall from me with Conley, Joe and Chris. One day I was driving back to my dorm from being someplace on campus (our dorm was on the edge of campus) and I saw Mike and Conley sitting on a bench waiting for the bus so I rammed up over the curb, rolled down the windows and told them to climb in. We were friends from that day forward. We would all eat dinner together at the dining hall almost every night of freshmen year. Myself and those four boys became friends with the four boys directly across from me...Ryan, Mark, CR and Jeff (co-ed floors were pretty great) and then the 2nd semester of freshmen year we met the kids downstairs. At this point, our group of best friends was around 20 people...no joke. We were inseparable. We had a block of seats at the football game so we could all sit together (getting a block wasn't an easy task either). We had an intramural softball team...the girls all wore knee high striped socks. We snuck kegs into the bathroom of one of the downstairs rooms so we could pump beer through the window while playing in the kitty pool we'd set up outback of the dorm. We camped together. We considered renting an old fraternity house so we could all live under one roof, all 20 of us. It was the greatest year. The other 3 of college were right up there too...the only big difference was we all moved off campus to different apartments. Mike, Conley and the rest of the boys from my floor all moved to one place. I moved in with Ryan, Joe and Snyder...they are my family now.

It's when I think back to those times that flashing forward to thinking of next weeks wedding, it is so bizarre. How things change so quickly. I haven't even met his fiance so it's happened in the past 3 years. And now Ryan is engaged. Apparently Mark is too. I remember one night freshmen year, Mark and I got up at 4am and walked out to this field and laid down in the grass to watch a meteor shower. I haven't thought about that in years. I remember sophomore year having to go pick Ryan up after he got in a bike accident...he had tears in his eyes because his bike had been ruined, ill aware of the blood trickling down his injured leg.

How things change. How people grow. How we age. How it used to be tailgating and late night spray painting and beer and Tijuana Flats. Now it's marriage, homes, children, 401Ks. I can't wait to see my college friends. I haven't seen most of them for 3.5 years. I left Florida in a whirlwind, left it for a faraway tundra, for the real world. I left my best guy friend standing in my driveway at my parents house with tears in his eyes, wondering when we'd see each other next.