Growing Old?
My
girlfriend and I moved into our
new apartment about 2 weeks ago, and no one has had a chance to come over and see it. So
Erin decided to invite an old friend of hers over to dinner, and to bring a date.
Normally I'd be ok with this; at our old places, we held casual parties all the time, and every
Thursday night we have a mini-get-together. We usually watch a movie or some TV, listen to music, and
sometimes play
magic.
Beer was always a guest.
This was different.
I met guest #1 (Roy) a few times before but never *really* got to know him. Guest #2 (Renee) I had never met before. I had no idea what to think of these people, what their likes or dislikes were, or if they liked beer. These were strict Erin-friends.
It turns out they were a nice, normal couple. You know, the kind your parents would have over when you were a kid. We talked about jobs, cooking, and the meal before us. We drank
red wine and had a nice chicken and vegetable dinner. They even brought a baked-from-scratch
pumpkin pie. We played a round of
Balderdash, then we listened to
mellow music, and finally finished the night off with sitting on the couch and talking.
Just like my parents did.
At first I thought that I wasn't quite in the come-over-for-dinner
stage in our relationship with Roy and Renee. I thought a pair of couples should go out and do something a few times first.
But after some thinking (mainly done during the writing of this
node) I slowly began to realize; it's times like these when you really get to know someone. You really get a feel for their
normal personality, the people you will become friends with. Not the
party-person that lasts merely one night long.
A "
Party-Friend," as any
party-goer will know, can be wildly different from a
true friend. I know how I act at parties, and it isn't "me."
This is the first day of my life that I took a
relatively dull night (no hundreds of people! no
40-foot music video screen! no fog machine!), and found it truly meaningful. This night was something to write in the diary of
my life, as opposed to writing it off as a one-night thing. I expect to see these people again, and I expect us to have a life-long friendship of respect and decency.
I think I'm beginning to grow up.