Odd Night

Last night, after a spontaneous convergence of seemingly random events, which some generous people with a mystic sensibility might call Fate, I met up with five other old-time friends in the Big City. My girlfriend and I had planned on only meeting with one of them, but she, our other friend, wanted to see the four others that she knew were going to be in the area for only just a brief while. Let it be known that the only person who lived in Big City was my girlfriend - everyone else was only in town for the day. Most of them lived two or more hours away from Big City.

To be specific: although I had earlier planned on driving that night the hour and half home, instead I found myself sitting in a dusty, somewhat useless and dilapidated barn filled with strangers in a variety of ages listening to the band my four other friends had created. Twelve years ago, I was in that nascent band's creation. My nineteen-year-old self revelled in playing the drums, not having a permanent place to live, traveling long roads to other towns at midnight, and blissfully feeling that all of the world was as open and new as I believed it to be then. And I felt that life would be just like that forever. I'm not, nor was I then, naive, but the good feelings that overwhelmed our small group almost coerced us to consider broader horizons than the work-a-day, bill-paying, child-rearing future. During my two years with the band, I didn't earn any money; I never saw a doctor, and I never bought any that cost more than ten dollars in a given month. As corny as it may sound in our cynical world, I was happy.

Which made last night so odd. Revisiting the past and seeing how we all had changed made me feel nostalgia for our earlier selves, but it also made me feel grateful for the divergent changes that occured in our lives, the changes that were further distinguishing ourselves into different people. Several of my friends had now completed college, had children, and were struggling to create a stability that was antithetical to our early band days. Now, being older is a reality for us, and we no longer live in the same world of the same possibilities.