Hey, old friend...

A few fun little things happening this week: caught a benefit show featuring three of the Avenue Q cast members sans puppets, sang my guts out at the not-so-sacred trinity of west village piano bars (Marie's, The Duplex, and Rose's Turn, for those who didn't already know), and watched a really fun documentary on Scrabble champions called Word Wars... if I ever needed proof that there were weirder people than me out there, I found it in spades. If Marlon Hill and Matt Graham can't make a living on the tournament circuit, they oughta just play Oscar and Felix in The Odd Couple for the rest of their lives.

The most significant thing this week so far, though, happened on Monday morning, while I was folding laundry, and was playing the cast recording of Is There Life After High School?, one of The Lovely Wife(tm)'s favorite shows. Eventually we got to "Fran and Janie," a song of old friends meeting which always brings TLW to tears, and this time got me too. Funny, too, because the song gets every detail of my friendships wrong. I never planned my life with my friends, we never discussed who we were going to marry, and all the stuff the song mentions. All we did was share classes, playtime, meals, family events; argue about sports team, trade books, make fun of each other's music tastes, and share all the nonsense that was called life through my formative years. All they did was make my life liveable.

Now, I call them once in a while. I see them every now and again, I've been to their weddings, bought gifts for their kids (okay, TLW bought the gifts, and I signed my name to the card, but still), but they don't seem to be part of my life anymore. And I miss them. I want to learn with M1, mangle the words to "Take me out to the Ballgame" at Yankee Stadium with M2, throw a frisbee and quack with Y, discover a new show with T, discuss grammatical niceties with S1, play tackle football with S2, sing shabbat zemirot with P&F, sleep on a futon at J&M's the night before a physics final, then get into a literary analysis of ElfQuest that would be worthy of a doctoral dissertation.

Failing that, I'd settle for just thanking them.