Kickoff to Drunkenness

The football playoffs are in full swing so that means lots of fun for Nick. Every year my friends and I all get together for each round. I look forward to it for various reasons. With the holidays I don’t see my friends that much as they as I are all busy doing things with our immediate families. So, with that all done, the playoffs are a good excuse to get together and bullshit with one another. This past weekend the fun started.

The opening round of the playoff’s is accompanied by a get together thrown by the Conway’s. They just had a baby girl and haven’t been out much so it was good seeing my friend Kevin and his wife Kris. I ate chili, drank beer, yucked it up, played a game of horse in the snow, and had a good old time. I know that is this just the beginning of the fun.

For the second round of games, my friend Wally has people over. Wally usually cooks a lot of fish, (which I am not a fan of but I can usually scrounge up a beef sandwich somewhere). For the Conference Championship games we go to Pat’s house. Pat lives in Alsip and rents a heater so we all can sit in the garage and eat his wife’s cooking. She marinates some beef and chicken, which is out of this world. For the Super Bowl it is onto Mike Phelps’ house. The scene there is something just short of Caligula. Food, drinks, deserts, gambling it has it all. I look forward to it every year.

It’s not really watching the games that I look forward to. I could watch them in the comfort of my own couch, but I would be missing out. I enjoy catching up with friends, winning or losing some money, joking around and arguing about whatever subject comes up. It is a lot of male, homo club bonding. There is some comfort in that I have had the same group of friends for over ten years, closer to fifteen. Most of them I met via Kmart.

Many have come and gone out of what we call the “family.” I take pride and treasure the friendships that I’ve made. Your family has to put up with you but friends don’t. I’ve spent most of twenties and early thirties with my posse and I like knowing that at a drop of a hat I can count on a number of people to help me out if I ever got in a jam.

So, for the next couple of weeks, I will busy renewing those friendships and adding more and more stories to my already large library of yarns. After the playoffs are over I will share the best of them on this blog.