A college sticker spotted during my commute triggered a rememberance, which I'm going to share, dear reader.

Back in the day, when I came to visit the seminary, both piscis and I, if I recall correctly, stayed with a young-ish couple, probably under 30, who had some tenuous relationship to the seminary (children of donors, same parish as a prof, etc.), and housed occasional visitors to the seminary, since they had a house and no kids. We were still merely engaged, and they had spare separate rooms. He was a clean-cut fella, who was A Manager, or otherwise In Business, suit+tie kinda thing, leaves bright and early in the morning. We're in to, I think, do apartment-hunting and suchlike, or maybe it was for the admission interview. At any rate, we didn't have to rush out, and so we spent a bit of time after breakfast chatting with the gal.

The conversation is a bit sketchy in my head (it was seven years ago), but ran approximately like this:

• She: So, where're you from?
• We/I: MI
• She: Where'd you go to college?
• wI: Kzoo; and yourself?
• She: Wm. and Mary
• I (duly impressed): Ah, cool. What'd you major in?
• She: [something soc-sci]
• wI: So, what do you plan to do with that?
• She: Nothing, I'm doing what I want, which is to get married, and have a home, and have a family and raise them, what's wrong with that?
• wI (backing away): Err, nothing, nothing at all, of course.

This was where the conversation stalled. Not so much like a car in traffic, but more like a plane in mid-air.

I was apalled, really, for one of the few times in my life I can recall. All the money and time, not to mention blood+sweat+tears to get a degree from a college like that, and to have no ambition whatsoever to do anything with it. I remember looking around, at her, pretty in her immaculate house with frilly curtains and nice furniture, a nondescript magazine she'd been flipping through, and being just floored. It was like spotting a zombie, there was this crackling of a facade, like an eggshell crumbling. Empty, hollow.

I don't know how piscis felt at that moment, or if she even remembers it, but I knew that this was something I never, ever wanted to turn into.