It's 12:30 on a weeknight, and everyone's back from where he's been and everyone's working his way towards bed. It's 12:30, but at any minute we could all launch into a 90-minute conversation in the kitchen, and I almost want that.
Right now, voices are growing louder in the hall, and I'd like to add mine to the mix, but I've got a column to write, I know it's not going to be good, and I've been here before.
I've been here hundreds of times, and usually I don't take note, and usually the night slips away, and we all think nothing of it as we go to sleep. But I don't have many nights like this left, and when you get to where I am now, you start to notice things a little more.
When you check the calendar and see that you only have 16 school nights left for late-night conversations, you start to think about them. But I'm not sad, and I want nothing more than to be done with school forever'I don't think I'll even miss the late night conversations, but I could take a few more nonetheless.
So now, Mike's in my room, and I hate to tell him he has to leave, but I have to write this thing before bed. And he tells me it doesn't feel as late as it is, and it's 12:45, and I almost want him to invite me over to sleep on the couch in his room.
If I didn't have this column to write, I'd agree to a sleep over in Mike's room in a second, and we wouldn't sleep too much. It'd be like an elementary school sleepover, where you talk until you can't stay awake, but then you can't sleep because you're too excited. College is all just one big elementary school-style sleepover.
College is like elementary school but better, because your friends don't just come to visit for the night. Instead, they live with you. And there's a lot of goofing around and staying up late and never really getting anything done. And then it's over, and by then you should be ready to go, and I am.
I've had enough, and I spend a lot of time thinking about all the times I'd wished college would never end. I think about those times, and I smile. And I think about the semester I shared a room with Mike, and I smile.
When I was little and I'd think about college, I'd never guessed that in the first semester of my senior year I'd be sharing a room and talking with my roommate until late in the night and eventually falling asleep with a stuffed raccoon in my bed with me.
I would have never guessed that my roommate and I would listen to Fleetwood Mac in the dark and have long conversations with the stuffed raccoon, but that's how it goes, and it's best that way.
And now there is one less night of college, and it's 1:20, and the house is silent, but I think everyone's awake.
I'm going to go to bed, and maybe tomorrow I'll get my conversation.
