How I Met...

Your Mother... or as I think it now should be called, "How I survived My Life After College"

People have been commenting and posting about how the show ended for a full 48 hours now, I've read a lot reviews but the one I like the most is from someone who has been part of "surviving life after college" life.  For an awesome, and totally dead on review of the finale please see How I Met Your (Spoiler) a review by my dear friend Polly, who unsurprisingly had the same reaction I did.  I should also mention, Polly is one my favorite people in the world, and during the course of our friendship we've had a great many of our own HIMYM moments, some I didn't realize were even happening, and I hope one that will someday soon include us singing karaoke.  Others were more obvious, like the time I got a phone call that started with "listen this might be a very interesting afternoon." :)

For me, much like the "Two Beavers" song, ultimately the show ended up being about friendship. The people who no matter what will have your back, even when maybe they don't want too. This show was about those weird years after college, and the big 'now what?' which is what this blog has always been all about.  It was about how life isn't always pretty, it's not always a happy thing, but if you've got people by your side  the messy unhappy times can be weathered.

This show was about figuring out who you were, are, and who you will become.  It was about "intergroup dating" and how messy that really can become. It was about losing jobs, and hating jobs, and getting "the job", and being broke, and not being broke, and figuring out how to handle all those "real world" things.  I didn't experience every thing that the characters on HIMYM went through, but between myself, and my group of friends, we hit (almost) every single one of the messy moments the characters went through during the run of the show. Even some of the less big life events, a bar where everyone knew our names (even after years of not going to it) silly inside jokes that probably truly aren't funny to anyone else, brunch (omg I love brunch) hangovers, road trips, stupid college foods, sandwiches etc.

It was about all those life changes that happen when you get to your mid to late twenties and beyond.  It was realistic in ways I don't think Friends ever was. I mean don't get me wrong, I always wanted to be friends with those people, but I felt like I had friends like the cast of How I Met Your Mother.    And maybe part of that is because when Friends was on I was really too young to understand the "real world".  And maybe part of that is because is when Friends was on, the bubble hadn't burst yet, the economy was still booming, and the promise of the American dream hadn't been squashed yet.  But even now I watch Friends and think wow, they glossed over a lot of life's messy bits.  And it was all tied up in a neat little bow at the end.  I'd like to think that Monica, Chandler, Joey, Ross, Rachel and Phoebe moved on from that apartment and those lives and stayed friends forever.  But we never got to see it, so really who knows.

But with How I Met Your Mother, we got to see the future, 25 years after that first meeting of all of them MacLaren's Pub, we know they're still hanging out.  They're still friends, maybe not every minute of every day of those 25 years, but the fact of the matter is those people moved all over the world, and when they were all together again it was like no time had passed.  As Lily said "we promised to be there for the big moments!" (which apparently also meant "the birth of her ex-husbands love child"?)
And I can only hope that years and years from now, no matter where the wind takes us, no matter who marries or divorces who, that we can be there for all big moments, and all the small moments in between all the way up to our "front porch " moments.

I am going to love this show always, even if I am a little annoyed that the "titular" character kind of seemed like an afterthought. I am going to love that there is show that for the most accurately described what I was feeling a lot of the time, and I'm going to love that I have a group of friends who I survived life after college with, and I'm going to love the fact that I never have to wonder what it would be like to be part of that group of friends, because I've got one.


(This post also could have been titled How I Met Your Mother, and homesickness, because after watching said show, and watching everyone say goodbye during the wedding I'm all weepy and more so than normal it makes me hate being far away from my nearest and dearest friends. )