Thanksgiving

My freshman year of college, I sort of... forgot… to make female friends.

I'm not sure how it happened.

I made a lot of female acquaintances, I had guy friends, and I had a great boyfriend, but I sort of missed the part when you spent hours giggling and telling secrets with a gaggle of girls.

I had never had a shortage of female friends before, so it took me almost the whole year to realize that I didn't really have any good female friends.

Throughout the rest of college, I'd make lists of women I wanted to get to know better. I eventually made a few good friends my junior year, then got the hang of it and made camp friends and Japan friends, then reacquainted high school friends, and finally work friends and post-college friends.

So many girl friends that when entertaining a camp friend a month or so ago I effortlessly put together a cracker jack pub quiz team of female friends. I realized that to my camp friend, we probably looked like a regular group of girls, the kind that I used to gaze at in the cafeteria at college.

As I sat there, perched on my barstool sipping Guinness, surrounded by my smart and gorgeous friends, I remembered those sad little lists. And how glad I am that I don't have to make them anymore.