Whoa. That's TUBA TIM?!

For most of us the semester has come to an end and finals are right around the corner. After a week of sleeping two hours a night and living on Red Bulls and delivery food, we will all be sprinting home to nurse our under eye circles with homemade food and a queen-size bed.

Of course you will speed to your best friend’s doorstep the minute you’re in town and maul her with hugs and gossip. But you’ll need to catch up on your sleep (which may take the entire first week) before you’ll be ready to venture out into the town you once called home and reconnect with old high school buddies.

You might see them at a party, maybe at the mall, hopefully in the car next to you at the stoplight so you can make a quick getaway, but be prepared. Here are seven people from high school you will undoubtedly be running into over break.

1. The Girl Who Peaked in High School
She was hot sh*t and she knew it. She had all the football players drooling over her every move and all the girls wanted to be her. She owned the hallway with her posse trailing behind, and when she started wearing Ugg boots, every other girl in the school was wearing them come Monday. And then everyone else left town to go to college and she….didn’t. Now she’s living with the parentals and serving you dinner when you head out to your favorite restaurant with the family. Her hair isn’t quite as shiny, her face doesn’t look quite as beautiful and you awkwardly pretend not to know her as you chow down on that burger.

2. Band Nerd Turned Holy-Sh*t-Look-At-His-Abs
You wouldn’t be able to remember his name if you tried. The only times you ever really saw him in high school was behind a giant tuba and a music stand. He was quiet, nerdy and – you’re not going to lie – a little creepy. But, damn, look at him now. You didn’t recognize him at first without the band varsity jacket, but it suddenly clicks and – wowza – college has done band-boy good. Those abs. Those arms. The way his hair is all messy from that adorable winter hat. A winter break hookup, perhaps?

3. The Too-Cool-For-This-Small-Town City Girl
They went to NYU or Columbia or some other school in some other big city.  After spending months being “city girls,” sipping martinis at the hottest clubs, they are now way too cool for this small town where everything closes at 10. And nothing but Domino’s delivers. They’ll tell stories about how they hang out at café’s listening to jazz music and talking poetry into the wee hours of the morning, and drinking wine while discussing impressionism at art galleries. You’ll be able to see them coming from a mile away: their street-purchased pashminas, their perfectly distressed boots pulled up over their midnight black leggings, their noses in the air as they lecture on what’s “trendy” (independent coffee shops) and what’s “so small town” (Starbucks. Gross.).

4. The Activist
Most people go to college in hopes of finding something they are passionate about, and boy did these people succeed. They left town, saw the world, and realized all the injustice that needs to be fought for. Now they don’t wear shoes and only eat tofu, spreading their granola-crunching passion all over your town. They refuse to indulge in the “blatant capitalism” that is the holiday spirit and make it known to anyone within earshot how they feel about this new “cruel leather jacket trend,” and the evil empire that is Wal-mart.

5. The Stranger-Turned-BFFAEAEAE
You never spoke more than two words to each other in high school, but when you see her at a party she hugs you like you’re long lost best friends, gives you a double cheek-kiss and tells you how great you look. Then she corners you, asks about your life, your boys, your major, and then swears you two totes need to catch up over coffee. And talk about what, exactly? The one time you were in the same group and made a Power Point together?

6. The Super Sorostitute
Her sorority is her life and you’d be an idiot not to know it since she has her Greek letters plastered all over everything in her possession (her jacket, her keychain, her cell phone, her butt…). All she’ll talk about is her sorority house, her semi-formals and her amazing fraternity boyfriend.  She won’t be looking at you, of course, because she’ll be too busy BBMing her sisters, LOLing about their parents and telling each other how much they can’t wait to get back to the house. Then she’ll throw her sparkly Blackberry back into her giant $500 (knock-off) bag and hightail it to the mall.

7. The Reformed Druggie
You never saw him in high school. Ok, you did, but never actually in the actual school. He was usually out in his car surrounded by Cheetos bags, a skateboard and empty Visine bottles. And now? Wow, what happened to the long hair? The baggy pants? Are those….khakis? Boat shoes? Wait…you’re applying to law school?

So it’s understandable why the anticipation of a trip home for the weekend (like this coming holiday weekend) can inspire a little anxiety, but once you cross the threshold of Home Sweet Home, you’ll remember just why it’s so sweet.

1. Home cookin’.

After a daily diet of fast food, dining hall “cuisine” and failed attempts at domesticity (and a pasta based backup plan) it is amazing to come home to fresh and delicious food. You want your childhood favorite? Mom and Dad will happily oblige. For one glorious weekend you get to come home to a hot meal every night, no stress required. And in those situations when someone just doesn’t feel like cooking, bring on the restaurants. When the closest thing to a gourmet meal you can afford is Olive Garden, nosh that’s a little more your parents’ taste leaves you feeling like you ate dinner at Buckingham Palace.

2. Retail Affection.

The initial bone crushing hugs and sporadic wistful looks followed by hugs that you’ll get all weekend are nothing compared to what you’ll score if you can get Mom to the mall. Her poor baby has been living in poverty at school as far as she’s concerned (and for the most part she’d be pretty accurate), so she’s more than willing to splurge on necessities like warm winter clothes (yes, everyone at school has 7 different coats, obv.), “comfortable” shoes for walking around campus (easily expandable into high heel territory) and any other array of daily wear that you have no access to at school. After all, Mom and Dad can’t expect you to shop at the bookstore for University brand gear every time you need a new outfit. And don’t forget the back to school care package you’ll probably get as you’re packing up. Take advantage and stock up on toiletries, hard to find makeup, laundry detergent, and any groceries you can bring back with you.

3. Your own bed.

The second your head hits your pillow on that first night back in your old room, you instantly feel comfortable. Your bed (if it was anything like mine) was there for late night sleepover whisper fests, studying for impossible AP exams, talking on the phone to your crush, steaming after fights with your parents, crying over heartbreaks and begging you not to wake up for your crack of dawn alarm for ridiculously early high school classes. Falling into it is like seeing an old friend and you get to sleep like a rock until you’re woken up by the scent of fresh pancakes…

4. Being a kid again.

The second you walk through your door, no matter what age you are, you instantly revert to age 10. Enjoy having your laundry done for you, every meal prepared just the way you like it and fussing over your hair, weight, dental health, etc., The best part? Since you’re technically a guest in your own home, count on little to no chores.

5. Old friends and haunts.

It’s great to see all your friends that went off to different schools and cities, especially great when gathered around a keg. Going out with your high school BFF’s as college students allows you to catch up and show each other just how much harder your school parties than their’s does. Also a perk? Going out to clubs at home if you live in a big city. Either you’re 21 by now or your fake is a lot more believable and you can finally check out what all the hype was about all those years spent as a minor.

Of course all of these aspects of going home are excellent, but the best one by far is the knowledge that you get to go home (to your new home) at the end of the weekend. It’s long enough to catch up and bond with the fam, pamper yourself with a free vacation before you head back to the world of school and responsibility, but not long enough for you to tire of curfews, chores and an itch for independence. So pack your bags gladly whether your coming or going home, you have a great weekend ahead of you at home and an equally awesome life to return to.

During Orientation, people began to cling together because, in truth, all of us were friendless. So my group of friends developed depending on with whom I ate lunch one day, who also got lost trying to return to my dorm after a party, or who was sitting next to me at one of the many assemblies. I am not complaining about my friends — they are all genuinely nice people – but I wonder: if we had gone to school from pre-K to twelfth grade, would they even give me a second glace? Would I give them?

I feel like making these friends so hastily isn’t really making any true connections. Maybe this is because I’ve never moved away, and so have known all my high school friends for years. I know them inside and out, and I am really grateful for them. Now I have plenty more people programmed into my cell phone than I did in last fall. I can call over ten girls to go eat lunch, or procrastinate by watching a movie. I can say hello to at least five friends every time I walk somewhere.

But what kind of claim is that, when I don’t know anything about them other than the generic five questions I have asked and been asked for the last few weeks. 1) What’s your name? 2) What dorm do you live in? 3) What are you interested in studying? 4) Where are you from? 5) Do you want to exchange cell phone numbers?

There is no number 6: What is it about you that would make us good friends?

The problem for me is that I do not know how to put myself out there — really let people know how I act around my old friends — without being ridiculous. I don’t think I am stifling my whole personality, but I am definitely holding back my love of cheesy Disney movies and my obsessive grammar corrections.

And so I now question as to whether my new friends are doing the same.

Are they truly this nice and smart and driven and friendly all the time? Because although they’re easygoing, they seem too normal and perfect to get along with a quirky kid like me. I almost wish there were a day where everyone could just let it out there, where I could burst into singing High School Musical 2 when someone asks, “What time is it?” Back home, that was my type of normal. As were sarcastic jokes, skipping down hallways and dancing without a care of how crazy I looked.

I know I will become more comfortable in time, but for now I feel as if I am showing the simple side of Kristine to my dozens of generically nice buddies. I am looking for a little more than that. For now, I am trying to act as normal as possible. Maybe soon I will find that my type of normal fits in just fine here.

“Heyyyyyy!!!! Ohmygosh we haven’t talked in ages!!!! How have you been? You look like you’re doing great. WE should totally get together sometime!”

We all have those friends on Facebook. People that we knew ten years ago and don’t talk to anymore. Except for on Facebook.

I have plenty of friends like that. And I even friend requested some of them.

Of course, those friend requests were mostly because they were the people that made my middle school years hell, and I like to stalk them and silently gloat over how much cooler my life is than theirs.

But some of them were sparked by a genuine desire to see how they were doing and what kind of people they had turned into.

So how does this whole reconnecting thing work, especially on the internet, and especially if one of the two parties may not be exactly thrilled at the idea of sitting across from their grade school buddy whom they haven’t seen since 1999? Something about the cyberdistance makes the idea of rekindling a friendship seem more approachable over Facebook (or Myspace, as the case may be). If your old classmate doesn’t feel like answering you, it’s a lot easier to not take it personally when all you’ve done is send a digital message instead of digging out an old phone number and calling out of the blue.

And isn’t Facebook made expressly for social networking? What is reconnecting if not maintaining your network?

On the flipside, some people don’t agree with the use of Facebook as a connecting tool for long-lost contacts. If you don’t, don’t respond. Or respond in such a way that it leaves no room for them to really pursue. Like, “I’ve got a really full plate right now. I’ll let you know as soon as things slow up.” Then, you never send a message again, presumably because your schedule is just as jam-packed as ever.

If you think it’s annoying when people randomly fill up your inbox or clutter your wall, then use what your mama gave you (your fingers) and click “Delete”. Simple as that.

I, for one, am all for the “Let’s do lunch sometime. ” Then again, that’s not everyone’s thing, I understand.

[olde time facebook photo from www.hoosieraneum.com]

And they make the rest of us look like emotionally immature, sexually frustrated, constantly single idiots.

But hey, you know what? Single’s not the worst thing. Because beneath the sun-touched, crystal-blue emotional coastline of those happy loving couples, there are gloomy storms. There are flashes of suspicious lightning and sudden tidal waves that crush the fishing canoes of stability on the rocks of impatience. There are the riptides of boredom that drown the surfers of passion. There is a dead seagull in the reeds, and it is gross and smelly.

Sexy and Stressed-out

One rather obvious downside of monogamy is that it isn’t polygamy. You can’t just go jumping every pile of bones in sight. And that might not a downside to some, since a sudden increase in sexual partners can turn your genitals into a giant bullseye for emotional instability, STDs and scary unwanted babies. But even if you aren’t planning on turning your dorm room into an all-hours Orgy 101 lab section, a monogamous relationship can turn even the most innocent girl-boy relationships into a nervous stressfest.

Maybe you’re visiting the guy you’ve been chums with since second grade, when you broke your hand launching your Big Wheel off of ramps you begged your dad to build. Maybe you’re going to catch a movie with an old friend who didn’t just bring his girlfriend — he brought the engagement ring to show off, too. Maybe he brought his boyfriend. The most physically intimate act you might commit is a badass fist-pound when you cut some guy off at a light. And yet, when you turn your cell phone back on, you’ve got four missed calls, a jittery text saying “were r youu!!!” and a voicemail that’s nothing but incoherent, angry sobs. And you’d say it’s paranoid and crazy, but at the same time, you know you’d be doing the same thing if he were having “a movie night with Katie” or whatever. People in relationships get protective, and it’s easy for that to damage long-standing — often longer-standing than the relationship — heterosexual friendships.

Love Handles

I’m sure that somewhere, probably in a different star system, there are high-energy, high-metabolism couples who love nothing better than going to the gym together. Their thighs, calves and glutes are wonderfully toned and a luscious emerald green, all sixteen of them. If these alien power couples ever decide to invade Earth, we’re screwed, especially if it’s during swimsuit season.

Because here on our lonely little planet, our primary reason for being in shape is to attract cuddle buddies. Once we’ve got that stable source of snuggles, there isn’t really any justification for sweating like a gorilla and coughing like a donkey while we pick up heavy things and put them down again. It also doesn’t help that most “couple” activities generally involve either sitting, eating or both: romantic five-course meals, double butter popcorn at the movies, enormous anniversary cakes. And while sometimes the constant, watchful eye of a lover can keep you honest (“You’re not really gonna eat that cake, are you?”), it’s more likely to be an excellent excuse for digging into those scalloped potatoes (“If this beautiful person can eat these and feel fine, so can I!”).

It’s true that when you love someone, they become a paragon of beauty, no matter how rancid they may look to everyone else. So a little thickening around the edges tends to go unnoticed, and may even be welcomed — just like a big, cuddly teddy bear! Aww, hey! But the rest of us think you’re disgusting.

The R-Unit

If you’re that person who always gets stuck planning the party, you know all about it: when you invite one half of a couple, you need to invite the other. They don’t come individually wrapped. And sometimes that’s kind of a pain, especially if you’re trying to avoid lots of he-did-she-did-what drama, or even if you just want to have a [girls/boys]-only night. It’s an old story: we can’t invite Kevin because he was doing that thing with Maura last week and she’ll be there and Kelly will not be able to handle that.. And so on, and eventually someone breaks your couch.

But it’s not only the people orbiting around the dynamic duo that get burned. Most of us are proud of who we are, and we don’t mind having a personal identity. In fact, you’re probably a little attached to it, and it sometimes it stings a little when people treat you and your significant other as a single human, with two heads and four legs and one bizarre, amorphous Frankenstein’s monster of a personality. Getting to know a new person is hard enough without having to battle your second head for dominance the whole time.

“What do you want to do today?”

If you’ve ever met that particular person, that one person whom you’re always comfortable with, with whom, you don’t even have to line up your thoughts before you speak them, who always gets exactly what you’re talking about, even when you aren’t saying anything — if you’ve met that person, you know how good it feels. You know how, when you’re with them, your life becomes a soft, pink, all-encompassing blanket of warmth. And you know how, eventually, even through your bucolic lovebird stupor, you will start to get really pissed off and hate them. What?

The problem with perfectly matched lovers is that they don’t have to try to entertain each other. Many people look at relationships as a sort of ‘chase’, similar to fox-hunting, except that nobody usually gets chased into a hole and torn apart by dogs. And there’s a measure of truth to that, though it’s not very romantic: a doubtlessly special part of any relationship is the shy beginning, where you’re gumming up your words and dropping things in awkward places and trying your best to be very funny all the damn time. And it’s fun because you’ve got something to gain; you need to impress someone, you need to change their mind, you’ve got a target. You’ve got something to achieve.

When you’re in a beautiful relationship that you wouldn’t change for anything, predictably, you don’t change. You become boring.. You don’t have to make an effort. When you’re so close that you don’t even need to speak to communicate, your relationship turns into two boring people sitting silently on a couch. At that point, it’s probably time for a breakup, just so you have something to raise your voice about.

So take your scant singleton joy where you can. Even the nicest relationships are still beset with problems, and while it might be small consolation on lonely nights, you can breathe easy knowing that you’re above all that nastiness. And if the solitude is just too much, get more stuffed animals.

[Photo of that happy couple courtesy of potterhauk.files.wordpress.com]