Something Unexpected

I had a great time at my 10-year college reunion. It was so much fun. I had been slightly worried that I might get anxious or slightly sad about being back and rekindling memories of the past, but to my great surprise, it was nothing like that. I felt genuinely happy to be back on campus, and it was so much fun to walk around the grounds absorbing everything. The old hall where I used to spend a lot of time going to classes and studying smelled exactly the same, like a mixture of fresh paint and something undefinable that flooded my mind with how it felt to be in college. It's so funny how scents can bring you back like that instantly.

I didn't feel a twinge of anything for my college ex-boyfriend. How fantastic is that? Not even when Pele and I drove by the place that I used to live that was just across the train tracks from the place where he used to live during that time. I must have crossed those train tracks hundreds of times, going back and forth from his place to mine. We both lived in triples, him in a room in his fraternity house divided by sheets to create the illusion of privacy, and me in my sorority house. I remembered stumbling home completely blitzed after mixers, the time I found a Playboy in his fraternity bathroom and threw it out the window after first dumping Comet all over it so that it couldn't be salvaged, the night that he called me from up in his room while a stripper "entertained" the rest of his brothers down in the common room, mint juleps before football games, and him coming to visit me in the library, following the scent of bubble gum and coffee. I remembered, but it didn't make me sad. It just made me smile.

I also genuinely enjoyed seeing old friends and acquaintances. I reconnected with a girl, Rackil, that I had been extremely close with all through college, but who I had lost touch with over the years. We picked up from where we had left off, so much so that I can't believe, nor do I understand why, I let so much time go by without her in my life. She has a much better memory for college than I do, and she reminded me of about 1,000 things that had made us laugh that I had completely forgotten about. In addition to Rackil, I met up with a lot of random people from my first year dorm, my sorority, and different classes. It's incredible to see what people are doing and how much they've grown and changed in 10 years. It was such a pleasure to talk to people within the framework of college, but without all the cliquishness that used to inform those relationships.

In addition to all of that, the Universe saw fit to send me a little present. I met a boy. Or, more precisely, I met a half-Indian, half-Swedish, smart, successful, charming, interesting 42-year old man who lives half the time in New York and half the time in London. Yep, half-Indian and half-Swedish. The Universe really outdid herself with this one. He was sweet, assertive, and extremely confident. He seemed open and honest, and genuinely interested in getting to know me. Who knew that men in their 40s could be so cool? I had no idea. It was so refreshing to talk to someone confident and secure in his own skin, someone who seemed attracted to me but not single-mindedly determined to get me in the sack - at least not immediately. He was very attractive, and I found myself attracted to him in a way I haven't been to anyone for quite some time. We had real conversations that actually interested me. Shocking, no?