Straight No Chaser

Young and Younger

and now, another classic example of facebook completely revolutionizing life. our school has this program, as i'm sure many schools do, where prospective freshmen have the opportunity to come and spend a weekend on campus with current students, to get a feel for the school. freshman year, treesje and i hosted christina, this really sweet girl from jersey. giant bright eyes, perpetual smile. hopes and dreams everywhere, not unusual for a girl her age, and as bright. i think she wanted to be a journalist, is what she said; after college she was going to try for northwestern, mostly because her high school boyfriend was moving to chicago. she was really cute, really sweet, she loved the school and couldn't wait to enroll. august 2004, here she was, just as cute, just as excited, always in the middle of a big huddle of boys. she'd broken up with the chicago boyfriend, i guess, because by christmastime she had somebody else. a senior.

i have seen her several times this year, increasingly pregnant each time. age nineteen, still supposedly on the journalism track. krystle said i was making it up. "you see fertility everywhere," she said. "that girl is going places." but then, ha! gone was christina's old facebook picture, the one of her in her sexy white dress, and in its place, an ultrasound photo. i'm guessing six months, taking into account how tiny she started out. haven't spoken to her at all this year, and only a couple times last year, so i can only assume she's still with the same guy, who has graduated but still spends way too much on campus.

we are at such a confusing age, because i think this is a tragedy, but i'm not sure. teenagers have babies all the time, of course, but this one wants to be a journalist, and is spending thousands of dollars working toward becoming a journalist. instinctively i'd say that if she doesn't know enough to attain her ultimate career goal, then she doesn't know enough to raise a child, either, and that it doesn't make sense to bring another generation into a family that's not done shaping the most recent, yet. but that's probably naive. or is it? people my age have babies all the time, but not because it's necessarily a good idea. i don't know. christina looks happy. all dimples, all the time. but she was always a happy girl. girl, operative word. who's going to raise her baby? not her, not in west end atlanta. someone back in new jersey, i guess, but i can barely imagine making that phone call. my mom gets irritated when all i want is for her to mail me my backup glasses.

heaven only knows, 'cause i don't understand. won't you tell me please, what's the master plan. (spend so many days, sitting on a cloud. heaven only knows, so i'll just something something.)

somewhere outside my (closed) window, "classical gas," over and over on repeat all morning. it'll be wonderful to go home.