Conversation at BYU

"Can you believe she is 22 and not married? What a loser!"

"I'll just die if I am that old and single. Maybe she shouldn’t have gone on a mission."

"If we end up graduating without getting married, we should join the Peace Corps and pretend that is what we always wanted to do."

My best friend from college is coming to visit this weekend. When I think back to how our relationship started, I have to laugh. We were freshman taking German class together. She started talking to me after class one day and we became instant friends. I can't even tell you how much time we spent complaining about how terribly boring our new town was and how much we missed our old lives (she talked about San Diego and I talked about Houston). College is supposed to be fun, right? I laugh thinking that we actually stayed long enough to graduate (she even went on to get a Masters).

Judging from the conversation above, you can see we succumbed to some of the accepted thinking there, but our friendship probably kept us from getting caught up in the normal cheesy lifestyle. We never baked cookies for guys or tried to get their attention mostly because we thought they were lame. BYU is all about rules most of which we kept. I know that we did not adhered to the rule about attending church 80% of the time, but when we did go we made sure to say hi to the bishop (hoping he would think we were there more often). We weren't partying or anything (you have to go WAY out of your way to find a nightlife there), but we just didn't fit the mold. We actually graduated without getting married or anywhere close to it (probably thanks to each other).

A few years later, she ended up in Manhattan and I ended up in Miami a world away from BYU. We were both single until our 30s and then married non-Mormons. She is bringing her cute little baby boy this weekend. Our kids will get to meet for the first time and I know we'll be laughing about how stupid we were.