The MFA in Random

This is what happens after you graduate with a masters degree:

People from your graduating class--people you've sat through classes with, people you've sat next to at bars, people you may or may not have at one point kissed--become a strange breed of friend. The Random Friend.

Not random as in, sketchy or undependable, but random as in calls you at 2PM on a Saturday afternoon, and when you answer, plays you Asia's "Heat of the Moment" before hanging up without having said a single word.

Which is comforting, since this is the same person who used to call at 2 AM just to sing the Ghostbuster's theme song to you or ask you to come over for beer and homemade salsa.

Masters of fine arts students are gifted artists of random. They give bottles of strange specialty liquor (Hot Damn! or 99 Bananas) for birthday presents. They throw parties where there is a distinct possibility that there will be a plastic baby in the middle of a cupcake. They think nothing of spending their Friday afternoon picnicking at the feet of a giant statue of the Jolly Green Giant.

And it's because of these things that I'm glad my parents told me I could go off and do whatever I wanted to do, that I could grow up to be whatever I wanted to be, even if that meant I was going off to graduate school for this vapory thing called creative writing and not something hard-hitting and definable--something like journalism. I don't exactly know if life would be worth living if there was no chance I would get Paul Bunyan pins in the mail, or if there was no chance someone would write me a story for my birthday. But I do get those pins in the mail, and I have gotten the phone calls with Asia blaring in the background, and I have had someone write me a story for my birthday. Completely random, completely strange, but pretty much the best thing in the world.