Friends for a Lifetime

This is post number 2 in my young adult years from Mommy's Piggy Tails



My college years were all about my friends. I didn’t get a boyfriend until my second senior year, although I had a couple of male interests, so my friends were my social group.

It seemed that most of my friendships revolved around church. In fact, the three gals I considered my closest friends through my college experience all attended the same church as me while we were in school.

I could write about Janna and our friendship, as of my college friends she’s the one I’m still the closest to and the one who I had childhood connections with, but I have already done that. Suffice it to say she was (and still is) a friend I could count on to tell it to me straight and kick me in the gut when I needed it, yet still supported me when I needed that too.

My freshman and sophomore years I hung out with Edy, who I mentioned in my previous post. We attended the same church, along with Janna, Paula, and a few other people. She was a history major and completely adored everything about history. She and Paula set me up on my first date my freshman year with a young man they worked with. I was so scared! They literally had to physically push me out the door to meet him for dinner! I was clearly unprepared at age 18 for the world of dating! But, I am thankful they thought enough of me to arrange that.

Edy and Janna were roommates my freshman year. That year Janna’s mom ran for a political office in our hometown. I remember sitting around the computer screen in Janna and Edy’s room having an “election party” and watching the election results. Mrs. B didn’t win, but it was fun to watch the results with good friends and food!

After Edy and her now husband got engaged, our friendship drifted a little. Not long after that, Janna and I decided to room together during my junior year. Little did we know that a beautiful three-way friendship was about to develop. When we arrived at school we found we were going to have a third roommate. That gal, Melody, was instrumental in my meeting my husband.


We had such fun as a room! We were all upperclassmen and focused on our studies, but we still had a blast. Somewhere along the way that year we ended up with a poster of one of the Three Stooges with a milk mustache. When we had our room birthday party (our birthdays were all within a month of each other) we thought it would be fun to paint our own milk mustaches with the whipped cream from our ice cream cake. Mel and I served as door greeters/ushers at Janna’s senior recital, cheering our dear friend on as she sang melodious tunes and looked fabulous in her floor-length blue gown. Us in our milk mustaches

One memory in particular always brings a smile to my face. We were talking one night about a dream I had had in which the rapture occurred (this is the time when the church is caught up to meet Christ in the clouds at the end of this period in biblical history). For some reason in my dream I was sent back to the earth because God had forgotten someone, and I was shocked to see Dr. Oats, one of our most prominent Bible faculty members, had not been raptured. After relaying this dream to my friends and roomies. We all proceeded to go to sleep. Moments after we shut out the lights, a semi truck drove by and blared its horn. I sat bolt upright in bed and yelled “It’s the trumpets!” We spent the next hour giggling over that. Somehow after the conversation and in the fog of early sleep I thought the trumpet had sounded and we were on our way.

After Janna graduated and moved to the far away island of Siapan, Melody and I had the opportunity to move into a dorm house rather than a dorm. We had such a blast setting up our own house with our other roommate. We took many a road trip together. I remember one time in particular we decided to head to downtown Chicago. On our way back to her house, we got lost in the ghetto. It was incredibly scary, and we were not sure what to do because we were not about ot ask anyone for directions. Mel called her dad on her cell phone and he got out his paper map (they didn’t have Internet at her house), figured out where we were, and guided us back to Rockford. Two very naive white college girls lost during the night in the ghetto of Chicago – not a good thing at all! Thankfully we can look back on that and laugh.

I will leave you with a final memory. Every time Mel, Janna, and I had a party, we broke out the lime chips. These are tortilla chips that have a ‘hint of lime’ according to the package. Something about the chips made us giggly and crazy. If we really wanted to get hyper, we would break open a bottle of sparkling cider or grape juice. To this date, if I drink or eat those things, I think of my dear friends and our awesome college experience.