Once Upon a time...

Once upon a time there was a girl in college who was so shy she used to eat her lunch on the stairwell rather than go to the SUB. She told her adviser she wanted to be "a janitor." She did however have 3 majors and parents who spoiled her by paying for her tuition (and her car and her insurance...)

At the same time, an older girl tried to be her friend, by encouraging her to write, to pursue her education and to come out of her shell.

Later, the younger girl fell in love with a guy who turned out to be a thief and a drug addict. Her older friend sent her gifts and offered her a place to stay if and when she ever needed it. She fielded many e mails from her young friend listening to her adventures with her criminal boyfriend and consoling her when things went south. She also helped her young friend out with editing articles she wrote for a newspaper, even to the extent of reading them 2 or three times and sometimes the night before they were due, setting her own work aside for this.

Later still, the young girl was trying to decide what to do with her life. Her older friend advised her to go to grad school and even wrote several very nice letters of recommendation for her (including one she faxed at the very last minute) and gave her the email of a former professor who wrote yet another letter of reference. When the young girl entered grad school, she had many housing adventures and her friend read her e mails, consoled and helped with comments on her papers and questions about her degree. She even consoled her when the younger girl whined about having to actually work 20 hours a week every week, even though the older girl had held down two jobs while attending grad school and paid for it all herself without parental help or support.

The young girl graduate from grad school, which she claimed to have attended because she liked the gowns the graduates wore and because she was bored. She finally found a guy who would support her in the manner to which she was accustomed. Having gotten all she could from her idler friend, she promptly proceeded to distort her words of advice, read things into her comments which weren't there and then pretend she never met her.

The older girl was hurt but picked herself up and went on to fame and fortune elsewhere, wiser now.

Moral of the story: never bend over for someone else or you'll get a kick in the butt.