Six Years Later…

I’ve been corresponding with my old roommate, Ruth. She’s working in Washington, DC now, and she dropped words like “senator” and “security clearance” into her letters. She said something along the lines of “six years ago, if someone told us we’d end up where we are today, we wouldn’t have believed them,” It’s true. Not only would we not have believed it, but it seems like we might have actively fought getting here.

Six years ago, I had decided that college sucked and I could make way more money pouring coffee for truckers at a local diner. College was a waste of my time! Sure, I was getting history books from the library, and reading them on my breaks, but I had NO NEED of higher education. I mean, I was making almost minimum wage! Screw homework!

We had a third roommate, who spent most of her time in her room rearranging her My Little Pony collection. (Not hyperbole) On a rare occasion when she left her room, she commented that Ruth was not scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of boyfriends but actually lifting up the barrel to see what was underneath. It’s a surprisingly accurate metaphor, and I wish I could take credit for it. She was working a string of underpaid jobs, and if there was a boy with drug problems or deep-seated emotional issues at any of them, she’d find him!

Now, I’m so impressed when I hear her talk about her life in DC, and I try to imagine the Ruth I remember at political dinners or metworking at upscale parties. It suits her so much better, and this is the life she always should have had.