Sunday I went to central Arkansas to my friend Sheila’s wedding shower. Let me tell ya about Sheila. So I went to a REALLY small school, and when I was in the seventh grade, this weird girl moves into town. Unless you were passing out 20 dollar bills to the entire school, it was extremely hard to be a new kid in my hometown. So Sheila has no friends. And I was not a very nice person back in the day. So Sheila, having no one to talk to or eat with at lunch, sits down at a table by herself and proceeds to have daily conversations with salt and pepper shakers. And since i was one who would NEVER talk to kitchenware, we mutually disliked each other (Sheila and I–not me and the salt).

Fast forward a couple of years, and we’re the closest of friends. And THAT was over 20 years ago. We are the type of friends who have inside jokes boiled down to one word, and just mere mention of random things like “salad bar” or “power tools” and we both completely lose it. So I was really excited to go to her shower. And she’s marrying a totally awesome guy. This awesome guy often helps me with computer problems, but that has no bearing on my opinion of him. Mostly not.

So the shower was in the same town I started college in. I lived there for a year and a half. The LONGEST year and a half of my life. This school was NOT a place small town kids who had NEVER moved went to. Yet I went anyway. Sheila already went to school there. And two of my other BFFs went with me. Well, I never saw Sheila (except in passing on campus, where she would flash me in broad daylight, but that’s irrelevant), and my other two friends one by one packed up and went home. (Do you guys hear violins yet?) So there I was. Me and UCA. UCA and me.

Last weekend I drove through the campus. Parents were helping their kids pack up and move for the summer. I got out and took some pics, hoping the campus po-po would not ticket my car.

This is the Speech-Path building. When I was a freshman, I went through this freak-out phase of picking a major. Somebody told me I had to. SOMEBODY was wrong. But for two whole days I thought I wanted to be a speech path. Just because I could sign John Denver’s “Sunshine On My Shoulder,” I believed I was already ahead of the game.

Here’s the football field. The mascot is the Bear. Guess what the girls are? The Sugar Bears. Isn’t that sweet? Scotty Pippin played basketball here. Yeah, I wasn’t that impressed either.

Here’s the Baptist Student Union. I went here a few times to hang out. There were like five of us. Didn’t return. But I should’ve gone HERE.

For free food during college, I would’ve gone to the Scientologist Student Union.

This is where I stayed my sophomore year (until Christmas when I gave in like everyone else and went home). I didn’t even know until last week it even had a name. Wingo. Hmmm. I guess I called it other things.

This is the art building. I didn’t hang out there, but I wish I would’ve–just so I could say that name. “Where are you going?” “To the Schichtl.”

This was my dorm during year one. Conway Hall. Really clever name being in Conway, AR and all. My BFF and I picked this dorm because on tour day, the other dorm was baking cookies and we thought they were nerds. I swear I was not on drugs, but there’s really no explaning the phenomenon of shunning cookies and those who make them. I guess we thought they were the type to regularly break out the Bingo cards too, but I’d yell out a little B14 for some chocolate chip any day.

In these dorms you had “community bathrooms.” This is fancy talk for “many showers at the end of the hall that are never cleaned.” Also since we had no in-room bathrooms, you had to trek down the lonnnng hall every time you had to pee. This messed with my head, so I would get up about 3x a night. It was so frequent, I had to get tested for diabetes. The next year when I got my own bathroom, the problem magically disappeared.

Well, that’s all for now. More good times in Crappy College Friday. I must prepare to watch Jason Castro get kicked off of Idol. Maybe in his misery he’ll do something crazy. Like wash his hair.