The Good Ol' Days

Call it nostalgia, call it sentimentality, call it wistfulness, but my last days of law school and upcoming graduation have me pining away for my good ol' college days.  I can't help but compare where I am now, to where I was at this point in my life four years ago:

1.  This time four years ago, I was planning my costume for the Dance of the Decades, a retro-themed costume party for all the graduating seniors during senior week.  I wore a short version of a Marie Antoinette dress (a look which Pippa Middleton borrowed from me four years later at her party with the Viscount), pinned my hair up into a mile high pile of curls and even spray colored it white, just to give it that "wigged" effect.  I don't know why I thought this would be easier than actually buying a wig.  To this day, I'm still finding white sprayed bobby pins all over my condo.  Four years later, the closest I get to a costume party at finals time is showering and changing from a Juicy tracksuit to yoga pants and a tee shirt while I mire myself in my outlines and mainline 5 Hour Energy. 

2.  This time four years ago, I was really really really really sad to leave all my friends at college.  I mean really sad.  It was pathetic.  I literally teared up almost every day in the final weeks leading up to graduation, no matter what the situation (my roommates can vouch for this).  I teared up at commercials, in the gym and at happy hour over a pitcher of Roggie's punch.  Four years later, while I'll be sad not to see my law school friends every day, the only tears I'm shedding come from the knowledge that my student loans will soon be in repayment. 

3.  This time four years ago, my friends and I were making random, sometimes middle of the night trips to various locations in New England.  I won "big" at the penny slots at Mohegan Sun, visited the Ben and Jerry's Factory and visited the Cabot Creamery.  Four years later, my idea of a "day trip" is a run out to my parents' house (they live twenty minutes from me) to ransack their cabinets for groceries and goad my mom into making me one of her famous grilled cheese sandwiches. 

4.  This time four years ago, one of my friends woke up with skinned knees, a bowl of chicken noodle soup in her laundry basket and just the wrapper of an entire block of Cabot Cheese (she had eaten the entire block of cheese) in her bedsheets.  We had had a good, good night.  Now, four years later, my idea of a good night is watching The Dark Knight (for the 15millionth time),  killing a bottle (or two or three) of wine and ordering in some nuclear buffalo wings (which I will regret around 4am when Mr. Heartburn decides to wake me from a dead sleep).

Is this lame? Maybe.  But hey, I've got a pretty badass highlighter tattoo that suggests otherwise.