Memories in a shade of gold

I've been occupying a disproportionate amount of my time watching Felicity, I'll be honest. Since the show is about college, it always reminds me of things I did in college and one of the episodes begins a scenario around mid-terms in which everyone gets mono, naturally. Of course, this reminds me of one of my favorite college memories.

My junior year of college, I had this awesomely great group of friends. We did all things random together, which mostly consisted of sitting at my friends', L and K, and doing a mixture of nothing, perfect pushups and pullups, watching movies and the stars and Bean (the dog), playing football and hackey-sack, beer pong tournaments and the like. Going to their house was always an adventure. Once, a friend J and I went to their house and no one was even home and it began a whirlwind adventure.

But this story is not like that story as it doesn't even have a fully-formed beginning-middle-end. It's just one of my favorite collegial memories.

There was this epidemic--Bird Flu--it's only been a year and a half, so you should all recall. So this epidemic was going around, shit was getting real. Teachers were required to allow you to miss two more absences than usual and the testing policy was relaxed (depending on your major of course... thanks kiefer, btw), so of course, everyone and their mother was taking days off for fun and saying it was for the Flu.

But then a plague fell upon the most invincible L and K house. It hit both of these fine ladies at the same time because they went to a party together in which someone had the flu and since my roommate L was there too, the plague fell upon our house as well. My other roommate, M, was a musical theater major, so his livelihood depended on his well being, so L was sequestered with the other L and K. Of course my other (and final) roommate A fell ill shortly after, making our house rather ghostlike and leaving me feeling slightly unwell. It appeared to be the beginnings of the Flu. I was sequestered as well.

If it seems strange that one of my favorite memories is of becoming ill, I'll admit, that part kind of sucked. But being quarantined with some of my best friends? It ruled, through and through.

I think the entire memory can be captured by a photograph better than it can be with words:

It seems to be the nature of good memories, though, that you can only hold onto that good feeling for so long before that memory sparks other, less pleasant ones, like the fact that the same party where they caught the Flu passed it onto another carrier and claimed his life and made him the first victim. I guess it's true, Ponyboy. Nothing gold can stay.