Two weeks ago, before I caught tonsil leprosy for the second time in as many months, I attempted to be industrious and healthy by going to the gym at 5:00 am every morning. I hate being one of Those People for whom the cliche "Is there life before coffee?" is applicable but unfortunately I am That Person. Very much so. So the fact I was voluntarily exposing my retinas to fluorescent light before I have had the chance to take myself and my 18 oz. stainless steel travel mug full of Breakfast Blend to our happy place was kind of a major step for me.

When I'm at a gym I generally keep my head down and find a piece of cardio equipment in the row that's reasonably far away enough from everyone else's in the room so there would be very little chance of my spandex-clad ass being in the direct line of someone else's sight. I also like to be cloistered off because when "SexyBack" comes up in the queue on my iPod I get a little excited and start bouncing. Same thing with "Toxic". Shitty music just makes me ecstatic.

So when I trudged in two weeks ago and looked up at the profile of my roommate from freshman year of college, someonewhom I hadn't actually seen since the May of that year, I stopped short and considered walking right back out. Valerie, my freshman roommate. Eight years and the only perceivable change was she had replaced the ribbons that held back her ponytails with a standard-issue ponytail holder. When we were standing in the middle of the Tate Museum in London during our 10-day blink and you'll miss it tour of the UK, our English literature professor described Valerie as a modern-day Botticelli angel, and he was pretty much right. She was pure in both countenance and deed, and the girl read her Bible and watched "Seventh Heaven" with the same sort of focused zealotry that I devote to "Laguna Beach" or waiting for the moment when one of my cats falls off the back of the couch while they sleep. It's the little things, you know?

I can honestly say my major contribution to Valerie's life during our year together was managing to spill an entire jar of salsa on her grandma's homemade quilt and also breaking every non-drinking, non-smoking, non-carousing rule we solemnly agreed to follow when we met for our pre-freshman year pizza dinner at the Mazzio's in Butler, Missouri. I'm not sure if Valerie hated me or not because she was such a sweet girl and I don't think she'd ever say anything bad about anyone, but I can't imagine that she liked me all that much, especially when I'd stretch out her tiny, tiny shirts when we played dress up with each other's clothes. I decided to make a graceful exit out of her life, mostly for her sake, so my sophomore year I took a dorm mentor position that came with a single room and spent the rest of my tenure at that particular college breaking up with my boyfriend and being dour and listening to a lot of Aimee Mann.

So, back to the gym. Valerie and her husband were pumping away on treadmills a couple stations down from mine and every morning I saw her I envisioned the awkward convesersations that might ensue were I to approach and confirm, it was in fact her. I wondered if she'd even recognize me in my rather matronly new state, so I put the idea out of my mind and kept my head down as usual. I watched her kiss her husband on the cheek as she left and he stayed to hit the weights, and I wished her well...another name to write in my history book and wonder about eight years hence.

This evening after school I was in dire need of one sugar cookie with green icing and sprinkles so I ran into Wal-Mart to inspect their baked goods when I passed Valerie on the way out. The conversation we had was so completely nonchalant and so devoid of any sort of pretense or surprise that we actually WERE talking in a Wal-Mart in the town in which we had both been unknowingly co-existing for two years that I felt like we were both eighteen, sitting on our single beds and curling our hair, and discussing who'd tape "Buffy" and "Seventh Heaven" while we were gone to our respective sorority meetings. I wanted to ask about her husband and her job and all the things that had made her eight years older and if she ever wore hair ribbons and if she had ever looked me up to see if I was all right like I had done with her, but I didn't want to ruin the moment.

So she invited me to aerobics at the gym on Thursday nights. She called it Ladies' Night and laughed before she walked out the swishing doors. I went off in search of my sugar cookie and was glad that not all of my friends are relegated to the annals of my memory.