I guess I’ve been onefourth of a clique since roughly the second weekend of school. Some might call us more than that-a cult, even-because we eat, drink, spoon, go out, break up, get back together and hashit all out over 10,000 calorie brunches at Libby’s Diner in Winooksi.Some might say we’re best friends. I guess I could see that. After winter break, one of us came back to school to find his room had been taken over by a rat. And by taken over, I mean the rat had managed to shit on everything-his bed, his desk and even his pillow.It wasn’t long before the cleaning brigade showed up with a dust-buster, cleaning wipes and more hand sanitizer than exists in most African nations. So where is this column traveling besides somewhere south of Emotional Mountain and west of No One Cares? I guess I just think we all need to pay more attention, and give more thanks, to the people that we truly care about and the people that truly care about us.And unfortunately, friends are one of those things that you don’t appreciate until you’re eating your Domino’s Thin Crust at 2 a.m…alone. But being best friends also means fighting like best friends.And right now, we’re all floundering a little. We’re all away from home, away from our cocoon of family dinners and unconditional love from people we’ve known our whole lives. And we’re forced to rely-I mean chosen to rely- almost exclusively on each other.We’ve chosen to rely on people that, until August, were strangers.And this isn’t something just characteristic of our foursome. It’s really characteristic of all college students grappling with new problems, grabbing at people to help them through and gripping onto them until, four years later, they go back to the West Coast.But that’s in a few years– for right now, for these years in college, they’re it. They’re my best friends. And I gottago. I think we’re going to Libby’s