I Was So Much Older Then

About 4 years ago, maybe 5, I was hanging out with one of my best friends - David, who's going to be writing for this site. It was one of the first times we'd ever actually hung out, and it's my first real memory of us outside of him inviting our acting teacher to a toga party on the first day of class (she didn't go, and he's still waiting).

We were standing outside the Student Union when he got a call from Claire - who was either his girlfriend at the time, his recent ex, or somewhere in the middle, which was kind of the problem. During that extraordinarilly long phone call I chilled with Kermit the Frog, who has a statue dedicated to him along with UMD's most famous alumnus, the incomparable Jim Henson. This was a long phone call and when he was done he was pretty shaken up, so at lunch he told me the story of him and Claire. I don't remember all the details (David and I have had a lot of talks about a lot of girls in the years since) but I do remember stopping him 5 or 10 minutes into talking and saying something to the effect of "I'm happy to keep listening, and I definitely will, but I just wanted to let you know that in the 10 minutes since you've started talking you've already broken up three times - and I think that's your answer right there." And I guess that stuck with him.

Because I had pretty much forgotten about the entire conversation until he brought it up a few months ago. I have a girl in my life now, or to be more accurate I don't, where if I say "when we broke up" the best response is "which time." So David gave my own words back to me, some four years later. And even though it was so obvious in the moment, I almost can't imagine saying that. Because it seems so much simpler then than it does now.