From Paris With Love

At 10:30 AM, I got a text from Emily that read: “get to the JE tailgate now! Move move move!” (Note: I maintained the typos to preserve accuracy…it was a text, after all). At the time, I was doing my best as a member of the Trumbull College Council to help man my college’s crowded tailgate…oh, who am I kidding? I was chilling underneath the Trumbull flag hanging from the U-Haul truck while eating burgers and remarking upon how well the other members of the council were handling the hungry masses. I had no shame, but it was the morning of The Game, and everything is subordinate to The Game…even responsibility. What wasn’t in that instance, however, was getting to the JE tailgate as soon as I could.

I weaved through the disoriented crowds, swerved around a meager tailgate hosted by a nondescript fraternity from that school in Cambridge we were going to annihilate on the football field later that day, and eventually found myself in front of the JE tailgate. Waiting there, decked out in all manner of Yale attire, were five of my friends from the study abroad program I did in Paris the previous summer. Emily, the mastermind of the operation, was holding a blueberry cake with one of those novelty party horns one often sees at New Year’s Eve parties sticking straight up from the center. It was ridiculous, but then again, so were the friends I made from the Yale Summer Session.

We only spent five weeks together in the City of Lights, but it didn’t take long for us to forge bonds that would last long after the program ended. Our final meal together as a group abroad led to routine Wednesday dinners when we returned to Yale. My inbox has been inundated by emails from them more than once this semester. So, it was no surprise that on the morning of the most important game of the year-the only game that mattered-we found time to come together again, but this time to celebrate a birthday. When the birthday girl arrived, we sang a rousing but horrendous rendition of “Happy Birthday” followed by hugs and laughter all around. It was a pretty messy sight, but once again, it was The Game, and when coupled with my friends, we weren’t particularly concerned with how ridiculous we probably looked.

It would be so easy to talk about how much I learned about myself from the study abroad program, how much I now understand about French culture, how many baguettes I ate…or croissants…etc. but when those memories fade away, as moments in time often do, I will still have those friends I made in that short time and the new memories we continue to create together. Time has already blurred my recollection of what took place the day of The Game, and I definitely don’t want to remember the score, but I won’t soon forget coming together in that instant with the once-random group of people that I now call some of my closest friends.