Now, keeping in mind that I'm not that entirely old, there are still good old days to be had and discussed. About a week ago, a bunch of friends and I sat around not gaming (a rarity in itself) and talked about those carefree days of youth when all you needed was some beer and a half way decent band to be happy.
Simpler times for simpler folks, I guess. But what truly brought this extended family of friends together in the first place? I wonder if every large group of friends (few of which I know to endure quite as heartily as ours) come about for the same reasons. Here are some ideas:
- Central Location - we had a Perkins where everyone would go after shows or just to hang out. There were two brothers that were herbs working there, I think one is a cop now
- The Music - I wouldn't say that out of 20 or so people we all liked the same music, but after living together for a while we vicariously changed and introduced new things into each others' musical palettes. Jameel put it best when he said 'After I moved I realized how many songs I had "collected" from everyone else...and I missed them...' (I'm paraphrasing but it was something like that)
- Books - same with the music, TSR fantasy novels and Sci-Fi were fixtures in nearly every house any one of us lived in. And if you needed something to read, anyone would lend you something.
- Acceptance - just about anyone could be an associate, but very few made it to friend. To quote Polo this time, 'We were the 64 people, but then there were the 64 people that were just there...not friends so much...but they were there.' Add to that the fact that we used (and still do for the single folks that remain) run prospective dates past the group to let people know, 'These are my friends, dating me is like dating all of them too...and they aren't going anywhere'
I doubt many people will read this (few ever do), but feel free to weigh in on what makes such a large (and now intra-national) group of friends, stick together for nearly (and in some cases more than) 20 years.
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