The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate

Air date: September 22, 1994
The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate

September 22, 1994 was a Thursday.  Just a few weeks before, I’d begun my senior year at St. Olaf College and my last year in the great cocoon of academia.  I lived in a pod in Manitou Dorm -- one of ten girls sharing six dorm rooms, a living room, and a bathroom.  We cozied up, ten wonderful friends, to write hundreds of papers, to celebrate birthdays, to read thousands of pages, to share bowls of ramen noodles, to study scores, to commiserate over broken hearts, and to make midnight runs to Taco Bell for Dr. Pepper and bean burritos.

And sometimes we sat down to watch TV together. 

I honestly don’t remember if I saw the pilot episode of “Friends” on that Thursday night. I know I had choir practice from 4:30 - 6 pm.  Then we descended on the Caf, noisy and ravenous as a flock of crows.  September in Minnesota is glorious -- the night may have been cool as we walked home from dinner.  I’m sure I had reading to do that night... perhaps a paper to write.  So, I may have watched that first episode.  But maybe not. 

I do know, though, that within weeks “Friends” had become part of our Thursday night routine.  The TVs in the dorm lounges across campus were tuned in to watch the six friends -- Joey and Chandler, Ross and Rachel, Monica and Phoebe.  We girls would huddle around the TV with a pizza and some sodas to laugh and laugh and laugh.

But there was also a bit of fear in each of us as we watched.  The end of our sheltered, happy college lives was close approaching.  Soon, we too were going to have to “go  get one of those job things.”  And like Rachel, I was worried that I’d end up with great boots and nothing else because as an English major I was also “trained for nothing.”  And unlike Rachel, I didn’t have my parents credit cards to cut up.  I knew my student loans were going to be due, and I’d have to pay them somehow. 

But for me, my greatest fear wasn’t financial.  I was afraid I’d be lonely.  The moment I stepped on the St. Olaf campus, I fell in love with college.  I lived on a beautiful hilltop, surrounded by smart, funny, interesting people.  Ruthie made me laugh harder than anyone I’d ever met and held me when I cried.  Terra and I had deep conversations about God and sex and travel and books.  Jelena and I shared an addiction to “90210” and “Melrose Place” -- our trashy escape from the ivory tower.  And what about John, Chris, Andy, Heidi, Tim... as a senior I couldn’t bear the thought that in nine months we would be parted. 

But “Friends” gave me hope.

They may have been fictitious, but here were six adults, not that much older than me, assembling their furniture and their lives together.  I didn’t know it then, but I would grow up with the Friends.  In the years since, I’ve dated, married, moved, been hired, gotten fired, changed haircuts and careers.  I’ve made friends and lost some.  Most of my best friends are the people I watched that first season of “Friends” with, but we don’t share a great apartment in the Village, despite my fantasies.  We are an architect, a writer, musicians, business women, mothers and fathers... and friends.

For my thirty-something birthday this year, my sweet husband, whom I started dating just weeks after the “Friends” debut, gave me the complete “Friends” series on DVD.  And thus begins my blog parked at the corner of reality and fiction... 

Monica: “Welcome to the real world! It sucks. You’re gonna love it!”