Who did we think we were?

That's what I asked when I sent my college roommate and still dear friend several pictures I dug up from our younger days. She had asked for photos to use in a slideshow in her upcoming wedding and I finally sat down a couple of weeks ago to go through old pictures so I could scan and send some to her that pre-date the advent of digital cameras. Most of them date back to 2001-2002, our freshman year at OU. As I looked through boxes of photos, I was struck by how young everyone looked and I couldn't help but laugh at our always-ready-for-party-pics poses.

The day we moved into the dorm.

I miss those girls. I miss them running up and down the dorm hall in preparation for a night out. I miss them getting biscuits and gravy from the student union and eating it in line outside the stadium at 4 a.m. so they could get good seats for the big game. I miss them riding around in the Explorer, rap music blaring and congratulating themselves on how bad-ass they were for nailing the entire song. I miss their anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better ambition, their sometimes overinflated but always unflappable confidence and their conviction that one day soon they would reach "the top." Those girls had everything going for them. They were young, cute, smart and fearless. I was dead-set on being a hotshot attorney, crusading for women and children and giving a voice to those without one. She was med school bound, with the goal of being a top cardiac surgeon and having a major impact on the world of medicine. They had big dreams and all the tools they thought they needed to make those dreams reality.

The night we ended up at the infamous Forum, or
the church-converted-to-a-nightclub-that-lasted-about-a-year.

But for all the book smarts God saw fit to gift them with and all the street smarts they were acquiring for themselves, they were missing a vital piece of information: You can't plan Life. When you try, it will shake your hand and tell you good game after it's beat you in a close race -- at best. At worst it'll roundhouse kick you in the teeth, spill your Dr. Pepper, steal your Coach bag, max out your credit cards, ram your car into a stop sign and then drop it off in your driveway with f*ck you keyed into it. Of course, being either hopelessly optimistic or a glutton for punishment, you'll throw yourself back into the milieu , bruised and broke, but hopefully not broken, and you'll start planning your next trip around the sun.

We made the most of the snow day we had that year.

I'd guess that about 90% of our plans didn't quite pan out, or at least not the way we thought they would. I could argue and say to Life, "Ha. You thought you changed all my plans, but here I am, married and a lawyer, just like I said. Sure I don't have three kids, but I have three dogs, which are much better than kids because they don't talk back, they don't touch all your nice stuff with their sticky little fingers and you can leave them unattended for a whole day." But the next week I feel my biological clock ticking and some kind of maternal instinct fighting for air, whereas the week before I was convinced that I never want the smelly, noisy, sticky little things. And let's face it, the road to (and through) law school was a bit bumpy, and right now the road to that hotshot career I envisioned has all but washed out. I'm sure Life is smugly gloating at my continued attempts to make plans and control their outcomes. The girl in those pictures would have flipped off her intangible nemesis and marched her headstrong self straight into the flood. The woman I am now stops and says, "Ok, I get it, I'll find another road."

I like to think that my mom is right when she says everything happens for a reason, and so there's a reason for all the dumbshit or hurtful stuff I've done just like there's a reason for all the smart, good or nice things I've done. But I also think it's bullshit when people say that they wouldn't have done things differently if given the chance. If the girl in these pictures would have been able to look ahead and see where she'd be in nine years, I'd hope she'd have been smart enough to do a lot of things differently. But that doesn't mean I'm not ok where I am, and it also doesn't mean that I think I'd be any happier -- I'd likely just have a different set of regrets and a different set of problems.

Proud of almost having finished our freshman year at OU
without getting alcohol poisoning or roofied.

While my friend and I have both been able to mark some things off the long list of things we set out to accomplish, we haven't quite conquered the world the way we thought we would. We aren't movers and shakers, travelling the world, making heads roll and hearts melt. We're living our relatively quiet lives, caught up in building our lives as part of a couple, planning weddings, juggling family holidays, fitting in girls' night and watching football with friends, all the while slowly carving out our niches, which by now probably appear to be series of unconnected tunnels that lead nowhere. However, if my mom is right, all those tunnels will join up eventually and we'll have had fun exploring them all along the way.

Circa October 2010. We still know how to rock it,
we just call it a night earlier.

It was good to be reminded of the girls we used to be. It made me appreciate who we've become and all the unexpected turns our lives have taken in order to make us comfortable with being women that our 18-year-old selves would have scoffed at. But it was also good to remember the I-can-be-anything-and-do-anything attitude we had back then. And I still think we'll both reach "the top." The mountain may be a little smaller and closer to home, but that's fine because we'll be able to recognize a lot more of the people and places that make up the view.