3/20/03
BIRTHDAY SKI WEEKEND
6 PAGES

So I have to talk about my weekend while it's still somewhat in my head.

I turned 25 over the weekend. We had a birthday ski weekend. It was me, Lauren, Lauren's brother Chris and his wife Susan, and our friend Eli.

One of the best things that has happened to me since leaving LA and leaving my big circle of friends is that my family, that is, my in-laws have really become my best friends. How many people just can't stand their in-laws? I was fortunate that Lauren's immediate family are all great and I love them and love being around them. Her parents are great. I don't feel uncomfortable around them. I can joke around with them. They don't criticize the things we do. They're very supportive.

Then there are her brother and sister. I went to school with Chris and we were really close. We were in Zeta together. He lived across the fire escape from me and Jacintha that summer in Boston and we hung out a lot. So we've always been close. And Lisa, Lauren's sister is great. She's 22, got pregnant and married at 18 but didn't turn into one of the many reject loser people who get knocked up in highschool. She's really smart and mature for her age, so she keeps right up with our conversations.

And the best times I can remember over the last couple years have been when I was hanging out with Lauren's family. There are six of us including Chris and Lisa's respective spouses, Susan and Tim. There have been nights where we just hang out at Lis and Tim's house and play pool and air hockey in their basement. And last year we went out for Lisa's 21st birthday and my 24th. We got Lisa good and drunk for hers and me good and drunk for mine. Tim is the most quiet and reserved of the group. Actually, everybody says that I've managed to draw him out of his shell since arriving on the scene. Which I think is kind of cool. And I've definitely seen a change since when I first knew him. He used to barely engage in conversation in group settings at all and now sometimes you can't shut him up. There was one Friday night last summer where we all went down to a bar at the Shore and Tim got good and drunk and he actually started dancing and singing. Something he never does.

But anyway, back to this weekend. On the way up to the Poconos, Lauren just randomly asked if I wanted to play a car game. I was like, "Uh… okay," cuz I immediately thought of the license plate game which is the lamest game ever. But we decided to play twenty questions. Now, I haven't played 20 questions since I was probably still in elementary school before you really start thinking abstractly. That game really expands your mind. We made an agreement not to think of anything too obscure that the other person would have no chance at. I picked things like, Sheryl Crow, Moses, Hangman, Tony the Tiger. Stuff like that. Things Lauren definitely could figure out if she asked the right questions.

But it's amazing how much 20 questions really makes you think outside of the proverbial box. On the Hangman one, Lauren was asking if it's an object you use everyday. No. Do you use it every month? No. Is it necessary for life? No. Is it made up of multiple parts. Yes. We agreed at the beginning of the game that every question MUST be answered either yes or no. None of that, "Well, sort of." You had to answer yes or no. Lauren's next question was, "Can each of the parts operate if they are separated?" And of course the answer is yes. Pencil and paper can work by themselves. So it forced the person thinking of the thing to really think and forced the person asking the questions to really consider the implications of their questions.

I always thought 20 questions was stupid I think again because I had only played it as a kid and you can't really think the way you need to think as a kid for that game, and that's the impression that always stuck with me. But two fairly intelligent people trying to pass time on say a roadtrip can really have a good time with that game and challenge each other and expand each other's minds.

Upon arriving at the Pocono's we got our cabin. It was such a cute little place. Really woody. :-) Chris and Susan got there about a half hour later and Eli about a half hour after that. We stayed up for a bit and talked and watched Comedy Central Friday night Stand up. We had agreeed that we should really get up at the ass crack of dawn and hit the slopes early before they filled up with people.

Now for all intents and purposes, Lauren has never skied before and the first hour or so was kind of tense. Not because she couldn't ski but because I think she was psyching herself out about the fact that she couldn't ski. Plus she knew that everybody was kind of standing around waiting on her. Not wanting to be rude and leave her, but not wanting to spend the whole day on the bunny slope either. Her dad was a ski ranger at the mountain and he was there trying to teach her and wasn't being very helpful. I just know that when I learned to ski, all the theory in the world went in one ear and out the other because until you've learned with your body, you can't actually start thinking about HOW you're going to do things. And here Lauren's dad is telling her to scrape and pivot and Lauren has no idea how to do any of that. So she was letting all that stress her out and she just kept saying, "I hate this. I can't do this. I just want to sit in the lodge."

At first it was very familiar and I could feel myself getting quickly pissed off. I had taken my ex skiing one time and she had done just this. She fell down a couple of times and then started whining that she couldn't do it and didn't want ot try and just wanted to quit. And after having just spent over 100 dollars on skis and lift tickets, it really pissed me off.

So I could feel that same annoyance starting to creep in. But then I reminded myself. Lauren isn't my ex. I love Lauren. I want to be with Lauren. I actually enjoy her company. So I picked her up off the ground. She was starting to cry, stressed out, telling me that she couldn't do it. I just said, "shhh." And I looked her in the eyes and said, "Lauren, I love you. It's okay that you don't know how to do this. People were never meant to strap boards to their feet and slide down hills." I told her it didn't matter how many times she fell. Falling is part of learning to ski. I said, "I'm not going to get made if it takes you awhile to get this. I'll only get mad if you start yelling at yourself. We'll take it just a little bit at a time." Then I showed her how to snow plow and slow herself down and we started down the hill. And she made it the entire way down without falling. AS we got near the bottom, she says to me, "Brian, I'm skiing."

We kept making run after run down the bunny slope and she kept improving with each trip. After a couple hours, Susan who had been skiing with Chris said she needed to ease back a bit. She was still relatively new to skiing too. So she skied with Lauren for an hour or so while I went up with Chris and Eli to do the harder slopes. After lunch, Lauren and I moved up to the next level from the bunny slope. A long wide stretch with just enough steepness that she could really practice.

And by the end of the weekend, she was up on the winding greens and double greens. Who knows, a couple more times and she'll be going down those black diamonds with us. I felt really good about that. The old me would have done what I did with the ex after about 30 minutes of her complaining. I would have left her on the slopes to wallow in her own self-pity. But I guess I'm growing. Plus like I said, I had to remind myself that Lauren isn't the ex. I LOVE her and I actually want to be with her. And I feel bad when she feels bad. So I took the time to say, "Hey I love you and I'm not going to leave you." I think that's what really helped her. As soon as she started getting frustrated with herself, I just basically shushed her and told her it was okay and there was no reason to be frustrated. I really think she was more frustrated with the fact that she thought she was annoying US than the fact that she was having trouble learning. But once she realized that I wasn't annoyed and wasn't going to GET annoyed, she was fine.

By the afternoon that day it was like 60 degrees out and we all got a little sunburned. And the snow had started turning wet and sticky. Originally we had been planning on going out and partying that night for my actual birthday, but we realized that we were going to once again hit the slopes early just to ski before the snow turned to slop. So we decided to have a drunken evening in.

Now, this is where the weekend got funny. On a low key scale :-) Eli got me Trivial Pursuit: The Last Twenty Years Edition. It was obvioulsy all questions pertaining to the last twenty years, stuff that we all grew up with. Initially, it was supposed to be team. Me and Lauren versus, Chris and Susan, versus Eli. Poor Eli, the fifth wheel. He's married too, but his wife stayed in Massachusetts.

So at first it started out as teams. But pretty quickly the women got tired and fell asleep. And it was just the three guys playing. We made a small drinking game out of the whole thing. Whenever you got a question wrong, you drank. Whenever you got a pie question wrong, you drank twice. When you got a pie question right, everybody else drank. We were planning on drinking anyway, so it didn't really matter, but it added another element to the whole thing to keep it interesting and frat party-ish.

Now, playing Trivia against Chris just sucks because this guy knows everything there is to know about Sports. I mean, he knows every statistic, every player and the year that they did ANYTHING for all the major american sports. So that means that he can just keep going and bouncing off those orange squares and roll agains. It's really sickening. Plus he's one of those people who just knows a lot about EVREYTHING and retains all these stupid little facts which is after all what Trivial Pursuit is all about.

Eli also knows a lot. And he and Chris shot right ahead of me. Eli filled up his pies first and started his way up to the center. But it took him forever to actually get a dice to land him on the center square. Even though he kept answering questions right, he just coulnd't get back to the center. Meanwhile, I had managed to almost catch up with 5 pies. Chris had finally gotten his elusive Brown pie. Brown was screwing us all up that night. Brown was literature. And these were some hard ass questions. I mean, authors none of us had ever heard of and really obscure subjects. It was frustrating all of us.

Well now Chris manages to land on that center square within the first couple rolls of the dice. And of course, the way it works is that before we draw a card, we select the category that Chris has to answer. So of course, eli and I picked Brown. Literature. I will not soon forget the question that ended up being on that card. "What gruesome two-some sold 2 million copies of their debut book, Chicken Soup for the Butt." The answer was Beavis and Butthead. Which Chris got with very little thought.

He won the freaking game on a Beavis and Butthead question! Here Eli had had all his pies for like a half hour and was just trying to get his player to land on the stupid center square and Chris sweeps in and wins the game on a Beavis and Butthead question! I mean, that like winning the World Cup because somebody accidentally kicks the ball into the wrong goal. Oh, I was yelling. Even though I knew I wasn't going to win anyway, that was just WRONG. A wrong wrong way to win that particular game.

But we really had a good time. Living in LA, I really got depressed because it seemed like all my good friends from college had changed. Or maybe I had changed and they had stayed the same. Or who knows. Either way, things just weren't the same as they used to be. When we hung out, sure we had some good times, but it just wasn't the same. So many parties and just hanging out sessions, I could have left and not felt like I was missing out.

I feels so good that there are certain friends that you can hang out with throughout several stations of life. I hung out with Chris and Eli when I was a naïve freshman. We would sit around watching Simpsons on Sunday night and shoot the shit. I hung out with them when I was finally starting to come into my own Senior year. Before I left for LA, we sat around drinking Schnapps and shooting the shit. I hung out with Eli for the few months that we were both in LA and I was trying to figure out where I was headed in life. He and Kate (his wife) introduced me to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and got me hooked. We sat around, played cards and shot the shit. I hung out with Chris in New Jersey when I was trying to rebuild my life and start over after two years in LA with a girl I knew I wanted to marry. He, Susan and I went out to sing karaoke, sat around the apartment, getting drunk and watching "Office Space" while shooting the shit.

And now we're all married. I think it's safe to say we're all grownup in the eyes of the world anyway. But we're still just college buddies. I think it's amazing and I am so thankful that we have been able to remain friends throughout the various stages in life. Not only didn't our friendship end with the end of college, but the friendship really hasn't changed. Even though our stations in life have changed, the way our friendship works has not.

Part of me worries what it will be like once we all start having kids. As I mentioned at the beginning, I'm also good friends with Lauren's sister, Lisa. Lisa is the only one of us who has a kid. And as a result, she and Tim are always the ones who can't come to something. And their kid, Erin is still young. They aren't running her all over town yet for dance lessons, soccer practice and Brownies. What's it going to be like once we're ALL doing that. Will we ever hang out like that again? Will our friendship be the same? When kids are around, you automatically censor yourself. Will we be able to have the same banter once kids are around? I wonder if our friendship will stay the same as we pass into THAT new station in life.

It worries me. We all gave each other a big group hug at the end of the weekend and said we had to do it again soon. With the 5 of us, it wasn't just smoke where you say, "Oh we have to do this again real soon," but all the while knowing you won't. We really mean it. And if it's in our power, we will do it again soon. But with Eli living in Massachusetts, Chris and Susan in jersey and Lauren and I in Philadelphia, it's not real easy to do. Plans like that have to be made months in advance.

I tell you, one thing I miss the most from living in Los Angeles was my friend Bill. There's a whole long and good story that goes along with Bill, but for now all I'll talk about is that the great thing about me and Bill was that I'd come home on a Friday night with no plans. It'd be around 9 o'clock. I'd just be resigning myself to cooking dinner and watching a movie when the phone would ring and Bill would say, "Hey, you wanna head down to Harry O's?" which was the bar in Hermosa Beach we liked. And I'd say "Sure!" I'd shove a bagel or a bowl of cereal down my throat, throw on a clean shirt and I'd be out the door. A lot of times, I'd call up "the girls" Amy, Carrie, Dana and Tricia and see if they wanted to go too. And usually they would also be like, "Sure!" I'd head over to Bill's and pick him up and we'd be on our way.

I really miss that spontaneaity. I miss being able to say on a MONDAY night, "Hey you guys want to go sing karaoke at Dimples." And we WOULD. On a freakin' MONDAY. And we'd close the place down. I haven't done that in so long. Part of it was the fact that we were in Los Angeles, a freaking city that thrives on nightlife, and partially because there WAS big group out there and you were pretty gauranteed that SOMEBODY would feel like going out. When your circle of friends consists of 6 people and two of them have a kid and one of them works night shift, if the other two don't feel like it, you're pretty much out of luck. Plus in New Jersey, there's no guaratee that there will be something to do that doesn't suck.

But one thing I had to learn after college was that you can't keep trying to live life the way you did it before. Because life isn't the same. You have to adapt. Now, some people take that mantra and turn it into, "Well we're older now, so we have to start acting like grownups." And they just stop doing the things they used to love. I saw so many of my friends turn into lumps because they figured, college was over so so was the party.

I have to catch myself sometimes from thinking back nostalgically on anything too much. I think it's good and healthy and fun to get together and start talking about "remember when." But to do that too much is to give to much weight to the past that you stop living in the present. I don't ever want to look back on any point in my life and say, "Those were the best days of my life." Because if that's true, then that means everything else is worse. No, I just plan on constantly reinventing myself. Doesn't mean I'm going to keep changing WHO I am. Just how I respond to the world around me. It's hard sometimes, and there are times that I find myself giving into those pangs of longing for the way things used to be. I allow myself to indulge them for a bit, but then I fix my eyes firmly forward.

I don't know how this next stage in my life is going to be. The stage the includes kids, buying a house, settling down into an area, registering to vote. I'm still registered to vote back in Maine. I was lucky on the last presidential election, it happened to coincide with my move east from LA and I happened to be up in Maine dropping off my stuff on election day. But I've never registered to vote anywhere else because I knew I'd never be there for more than a couple years.

What will this next stage be like. And will my friends come with me? I look at my mom. She doesn't keep in touch with her very best friends from highschool. None of them. I know Chris will always be there. One of the benefits of marrying into his family. But what about Eli. And even with Chris, and Lisa. 10 years from now, will we still get together and have a game night. Will we all get away for ski weekends or trips to the outerbanks? Will having the kids destroy who we are with each other? What about Eli? Where will he be in all of this?

I just don't know.