I won't tell you mine if you don't tell me yours

Ah, yes. Homecoming 2010 is upon us. And that can only mean one thing: The campus is crawling with Spiders.

It's one of two weekends of the year (the other, of course, being the high holy day of Pig Roast) that alumni can return to campus without being perceived by their peers and students as lingering dingleberries.

And during this magical weekend, age and consequences don't seem to exist. Alumnae are skipping around campus like freshmen, eating hun-cal fro yo and talking about fall coats.

Alumni are streaking across the quad like Frank the Tank because come next weekend, their Saturdays will be spent at Bed, Bath & Beyond with their girlfriends in search of the perfect kitchen textiles to match their waning masculinity.

This is the beauty of Homecoming -- for one fleeting weekend we're all back in one fat hot tub time machine. The spirit of bliss and utter abandonment can cause strange things to happen.

And of course, we find out what actually happens to people like us after they leave Never Never Land.

Unemployed? Not to worry, of course you are. Considering the economy is limping along with the voracity of the Jonas brothers' sex life, you might as well return to your alma mater and pretend graduation never happened.

Employed? Excellent. Drinks on you.

And even though you might be flaunting your double Blackberries and platinum company cards, I'll bet there's still a part of you that's jealous of my two-bedroom, IM fields-view, beer-scented University Forest Apartment.

And these invaluable accommodations make for the ever-amusing Homecoming weekend sleeping arrangements.

Even though you might have your own queen-size, TempurPedic bed in your trendy SoHo loft, your little-little's urine-stained couches might have to do this weekend.

In fact, you might miss your campus housing so much that you wake up in the nude, sitting Indian-style in your former apartment while a small Asian foreign exchange student is poking you with an aluminum baseball bat and telling you you have to leave.

And of course, there's always the possibility you wake up in Gray Court next to someone x amount of years your junior (you two probably played the I-won't-tell-you-my-real-age-if-you-don't-tell-me-your's game) with the vague memory that you committed the night before to his or her Christmas social.

And the latter is really what Homecoming weekend is all about: relationships (and I use that term very loosely). Welcome home ex-flames and new flames, awkward confessions of love and ultra-sketch behavior.

And while alums might refer to coming back to college as an opportunity to find "fresh meat," Homecoming is a little something my friends and I like to call "employed meat."

It's a mutually dependent relationship, but not just for the reason mentioned above. Students and alums reuniting every so often helps us both to ease into the transition to the post-graduate lifestyle.

We don't have to grow up all at once, but then again, you don't need me to tell you that because there's a little film called "Old School," in which a wise man said: "Frank here was staring at a white picket fence. Now he's single, he's broke and has second-degree burns all over his body.

"And I see a spark in his eye that I haven't seen in 15 years."

While those who have left our small community encourage us that there is still life after we grow up and leave Never Never Land, we're here to show them you can always come home again.