Ode to Nancy

During my four years in college I had five roommates that I officially shared a room with along with a dozen others that I shared an apartment and house with (yeah Phoenix House!). It seems like I have an unusually high number of friends I call roommate - basically everyone from my college days is classified as "an old roommate," but my first semester sophomore year roommate was definitely a blast!

Nancy Houck, who is no longer Nancy "Houck," and I lived on the same floor our freshman year at Wheaton. Neither of us clicked especially well with our actual roommate and we lived across the hall from each other on Fischer 5 West so we spent a lot of time hanging out together. Late night pizzas with another friend, Sydney, and lots of meals in SAGA grew our friendship to the point that we decided to room together our sophomore year.

I've never had a friend quite like Nancy who is so, well...quirky! She was a talker and everything of her hometown and growing up years was a story. I still remember her talking about her mom growing earth recycling worms in her classroom, experiences with Girls State, times at Mosquito Lake, and I feel like I'm just getting started with my Nancy-isms. In fact I made a list of "Fun Facts about Nancy" that I hung on our wall sophomore year that grew longer every day.

So like the first night we were back in Wheaton our sophomore year, Nancy breaks the news to me that she is planning to transfer at the end of the semester to Cedarville!! What!!?? I was devastated. She had lots of reasons, a good one being she changed her major to nursing which Wheaton didn't really have a nursing program, but I was losing a great friend. We had a lot of fun that fall semester. When I am looking through the mail, I often remember the semester long mail contest that we had. We developed a point system so that packages were worth more points, mail from overseas was worth extra, and if a letter was from a MALE (non-relative) that was like 50 points! By the way, Bambootique owner Beth from down the hall (who I've mentioned several times on this blog) actually won the contest because she happens to stay in touch with every friend she has ever made in all of her travels and places that she has lived.

Anyway, this ode to Nancy is being made because although I have long ago lost touch with my dear friend, after all of these years, I have continued to use the Cedarville ice scrapper she sent to me (in hopes that it would give me points in any future mail contests since it was a package). But a few weeks ago, my dear husband hit a tough piece of ice on our windshield and the scrapper gave up its life. I feel like my last connection to Nancy is gone. Maybe somehow she'll read this blog and get in touch with me again, but if not Goodbye Nancy! I'll always remember Calve man, the Chief Chair, and watching Carnie late at night.