Sunday, April 28, 2013

look back and laugh

Yesterday was my friend's Ginny and Dave's Jack and Jill. Normally, I would skip these types of things but I can't afford to go to the wedding up in Vermont, so I paid the 20 bucks to get in to the American Legion to show my support. Near the end of the night, it had it's moments that made me smile inside and feel really good, but that old feeling of closeness and affection I once had with these people is pretty much non-existant. Ginny and Dave both have really big families so the majority of the party was made up of them, a lot of my friends (including myself) are shy people who only act out or have a lot to say when we've been drinking. Most of my friends, including myself, don't drink anymore and have even quit smoking (not me!). So for a majority of this shin-dig, we caught up In between big gaps of silence, reminding me that throughout high school and early adulthood that we were glorified drinking buddies more than anything else. Even though I haven't drank in a long time, I brought a half pint of soco along with me, thank god I did, or I would have been falling asleep in my chair. The music was lousy, Dave's cousin "DJ'd" the event, completely disregarding Ginny and Dave's taste in music, playing shit like Bruce Springsteen and a lot of country. And even when they through on the cotton eyed Joe, I said, what the fuck, and I got up from the table and did it with my buddy Lee because I wasn't having any fun sitting around that table with these people. The thing is, we're in our twenties, but I was sitting around the table with what felt like a bunch of high school kids trying to prove they were cool, by not laughing at bad jokes the DJ told or jamming out to really shitty music. I don't care anymore, yes some of that old humor and bad music gets to me, but I want to make the best of any given situation. And it's been a long time since I felt that sort of "peer pressure", to act that way too, and I almost felt like a fool until Ginny, sick of listening to family members karaoke country song after country song, karaoked "Roxanne" by the police...

Let me explain the Ginny I met back in 7th grade. Ginny was timid, afraid to speak her mind. terrified of everything. Designated babysitter everytime we drank because she was too afraid her parents would catch her. I had to yank this girl out of her shell and it took years!! And here she is, beer in hand, dancing around in a flowing skirt, belting out Roxanne, while Dave stands at a distance, staring at her and smiling wider than I've ever seen in my life. I could see this love radiating from his face and it was beautiful. I wanted to cry because that is a moment they will tell their kids and grandkids about.  It just stuck me as funny, that the person out of all of us to rock the party was her. So by the end of the night, her and I were out on the dance floor jamming out to bad hip hop songs, while everyone else sat there like bumps on a log.

I come home around 10:30 and Mark has a few friends over. His friends are the polar opposite, they don't want to grow up. the stragglers were still there, one of them drunk, passed out in a chair, the other a schizophrenic kid who has never held a job (who Mark didn't want there but someone dragged along and then left him there). These two kids had no rides and were too drunk to walk home, so had to pass out on the couch in the basement. One had the nerve to ask Mark if he could stay longer (around 7am) and have Mark give him a ride home on his way to work. Mark says no, your lucky enough we let you sleep on our couch, you put yourself in this position, get yourself out of it. Everywhere I go, people either act as though they are too mature or they just act like kids in high school, I can't win. Mark can see it too. I know your supposed to grow up and stray from your friends, but with a lot of them, it's gotten to the point, where we don't even see what we used to see in them at all.