Oh what a night

I am a pack rat. I save things that really should have been tossed a long time ago. Like my Duran Duran poster. I bought it when I was 15. I still have it. Well, at the moment it's in Atlanta, but I left instructions that it is to be saved. Why? It just sits rolled up in the closet. I'm surely not going to be hanging it up anytime soon. There are certain things that, while totally cool tacked up to your wall up until you graduated from college (what? I couldn't bear to take it down) that now that you're a grown up have no place on your bedroom wall. Even if you do put it in a frame (which I did not, but someone I know has a poster hanging in his room that, while he claims it says rock and roll, I'd call it "Dorm room, circa 1991). He also has a mini fridge in there, and a lifestyle that pretty much resembles that of a (maybe) recently graduated frat boy. But I digress.

I was in New York in February for my sorority anniversary, back in my small college town. Everything was the same, and yet completely different. Our favorite bar was still there, but was dark and quiet. Quite the contrast from the crowded, noisy, and yes, kind of disgusting place we spent every weekend night (and some school nights. And ok, some days too) so many years ago. Well, not THAT many. One of my sorority sisters said that she wished she could go back and have just one night at that bar. To be 21 again (or 20 or 19, but, well, whatever, my ID was good) and have one night to do it again. Not knowing what she knows now, no. Just a night where we were all young and dancing and had not a care in the world except whether or not our Pi Kap/Delt/Sammie/TKE (those damn TKEs) crush was there and was checking us out. I am with her. I would love to have one night back, where my biggest worry was whether or not it was going to be snowing on the walk back to the sorority house (because of course I didn't have a coat). I don't know if I'd just want to go back to that girl I was, not knowing what I know now. To repeat the same stupid things. To get my heart broken again, or break a little piece of someone else's. But then again, I guess I'd have to agree with her. Ignorance is bliss. It would be better not knowing, and just happily take a swig of my Milwaukee's Best Light long-neck (We were in college. We were poor.) and dancing to Groove is in the Heart or Just Like Heaven. Good times. Really good times.

So yes, we're "grown ups" now, but we can't let go of that time completely. It's what brought us here. So while it's no longer appropriate to decorate your room with posters stuck up with blue gummy mounting squares and frat paddles, (and the thought of a Beast Light makes you want to gag) you still hold on to those things that take you back. The Duran Duran posters and the concert t-shirts. Tucked away in drawers and closets, to be taken out and looked at fondly, like an old photo of a bunch of laughing sorority girls in jean shorts with leggings and flats. In February. Damn we looked good.