Good Times

It's Monday morning and I think I've finally stopped laughing.

Yvonne and I spent Saturday evening at a "reunion" of all my closest friends from my teenage years. It's the first time that I have been with these people - all in one room - in twenty years. We've seen each other around town from time-to-time but had never gotten together to re-live it all...until Saturday night.

As I'm writing this, I'm sitting here trying to tell you about this gathering and realizing that there's no way for me to really explain our group. You just had to live it with us. Seriously, I'm trying to come up with the words and after I write each sentence, I erase it and start over because it just doesn't make any sense. Even though Yvonne enjoyed the laughter Saturday night, she didn't get most of it because she wasn't a part of it all back in the day.

We were a really tight group. We seemed to always be going somewhere. We took a lot of trips to the beach and to concerts and somebody seemed to always be dancing. We aimlessly rode around town --- yet it had purpose. We were always together at somebody's house doing something --- but never on Sunday. We worked at the same places and amazingly never got fired. We had our own language that even today makes me laugh so hard that I cry --- yet no one else gets it. See what I mean? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you were there.

We were crazy teenagers and 20-somethings living it up and making memories to last a lifetime. Most of it was just silly nonsense and fun. Sure, we did some stuff we shouldn't have done. We made some mistakes along the way. But through it all, a deep bond developed that is amazingly still intact even after all of these years.

So, I'm thankful today for old friends. Being with everyone again made me realize that I regret letting those relationships slip away as time passed. I moved away and was gone for 16 years so I guess it was bound to happen. But even though many things have changed - now we have real jobs, kids and responsibilities - the laughter and the good times are still there. I hope there's more of that with the old gang in the days to come.

"A friend loves at all times..." Proverbs 17:17