Just sitting down with coffee on a Sunday morning, feeling a little nostalgic...
2006 has been a year to celebrate 40th birthdays. You probably heard us talking about my 40th a couple of weeks ago. My wife threw this huge, incredible party in the Local Heroes party room. It was an amazing night but, as the victim of the surprise, I only had a short amount of time to spend with everyone. Last night was different.
This time it was my friend Mike’s turn. A great evening with high school cronies I hadn’t seen in a while, all turning 40 this year. Remember the time…? Remember that guy…? What’s he/she doing now…? She did NOT age well…Clearly, to borrow a line from the Bowling for Soup Song, we’re still preoccupied with 1985. Now I work with a producer, Kenny, who’s a great guy. But he was born in 1984. 1984!!??
We spoke of how quickly the time has flown since high school. I vividly remember a time when I would laugh at how lame it was when old people talked that way. Sheesh. An official passage into middle age, I guess.
They say that forty is the new thirty. But forty feels like 18 to me, particularly when you’re with childhood friends. It’s a freaking time warp. Some guys are going grey, some growing bald and some are getting soft around the middle. Most of us are dads, one guy is a big wig at CIBC, another runs a major Canadian hockey rink, another owns two Physiotherapy clinics.
But the semi-drunken conversation immediately wheeled around to the same old subjects. If it weren’t so cold and wet, we’d probably have gone out to play road hockey. All the laughs were a little different, perhaps deeper and a little more meaningful than the ones we enjoy with newer friends.
For a night, it was like being back at South Carleton High School or at one of the many parties held while parents were away for the weekend. We wondered all about the key issues of the day, issues that spoke to our new level of age and wisdom like, “How come they put pretzels in party mix when no one wants them there?”
Okay. Gotta roll. I feel like I need a nap. And that’s where the age does start to show - recovery time after great evenings like last night.
A note to those of you who are in your early 20’s reading this: just watch how fast the next 15 years go. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
