Friday night was fun. I met up with an old friend. Hadn’t seen him in like, shit, 15 years or so? It was crazy, but he’s one of those guys that you just pick up with, like you guys just hung out the previous night. Our families met up at a restaurant, and as I walked in, I snuck behind him and put him in a headlock; it was great to see them.
Of course, as the evening proceeded, we took the walk down memory lane; we reminisced about another lifetime, and how crazy we once were. There are no shortage of memories; definitely some that are better left back when they occurred. One of the first memories I have was when he came over to my apartment for the first time; we played Madden. Of course, he was talking shit, especially after jumping out to a huge halftime lead. But this was my house, and after I came back and beat him, that’s exactly what I said, as I hopped on top of the window ledge. Then, we filled up our half full Snapple bottles with Southern Comfort, and headed out. We faced off against each other in a work basketball league; that was an instant classic. Again, his team up, talking crap, and I had one of my best moments ever; I went nuts, hitting everything in the 2nd half, as our team came back and won. That was the only year we faced each other; we played on the same team from then on out. We spent countless nights hanging out either playing video games, cards, both… enjoying many party favors. We went on vacations together. We also have shared some Chicago sports moments. A few come to mind…
I think the first was a Cubs game in September way back when; they sucked… Wrigley was empty, and cold. We spread out in a couple rows in the 200 level, and had a bottle of Kentucky bourbon with us, kept filling up our Pepsi cups. I remember that night… surprisingly. There was a pre-season Bears game that was pretty memorable. It was against Arizona; we rolled out, maybe about 10 deep, on the Cermak bus to the game. We were pretty tame going, but coming back… We never made it to our seats; hung out drinking the whole time on the concourse. Fun times. The biggest one I can think of is when we went to see the Bears play in Oakland together. Talk about good times… he still does the one Bears road game per year; we’ll need to reconvene at some point on one of those trips. It doesn’t have to be Vegas, where he went last year… where we’ve been together a couple times… or down in Mexico, where we’ve also been together. It can be somewhere less “dangerous”…
We talked about our old friend, that is no longer with us. Yeah, he essentially drank himself to death; when we all slowed down, he kept going. Sucks. I’d like to think he was there in spirit with us on this evening. I’d like to see this friend more frequently than every 15 years or whatever it was; living in Florida makes it tough, but it can be done. I haven’t exactly made the greatest effort. But you know, life is short, and you only have so many friends… you know, the ones that really know you… the ones you went through battles with… Sorry for getting philosophical, but I think there’s more of this to come… Great seeing you man! See you again… sooner than later.
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