(With men, sure enough, coming between: If your roommate invited a man to your dorm room, it was understood you had to leave if it was bedtime, you had to find somewhere else to spend the night.)īut as everyone past a certain age knows, the kind of ardent friendship common to youth rarely happens once youth is gone. Ours was a women’s college, and the friendships I’m talking about were among women. “One single, endless, smoky conversation, interrupted by classes and a little sleep,” is how I once described it, in a novel for which I drew on my own freshman year more than half a century ago. There is nothing like the friendships people make when they leave home for campus. The oldest friend I have is someone I met on my first day of college, as each of us was moving into the same dorm. I hope so, too, though I can’t say I’d be shocked if that happened. She just hopes no man ever comes between them.
As does one girl’s mother, a woman who has always “failed” at female friendship, she tells me. But I, who lost touch with every childhood friend long ago, envy them. Four years of separation is out of the question, they say: They would die.Īt least one of their parents thinks their daughter is being unreasonable. Classmates from preschool through high school, they are now determined not only to go to the same college but to room together.
All through childhood they saw each other almost every day. I ONCE MET two girls whose friendship began when they were babies living on the same street.
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