calm our dazed heads and discombobled bodies

I've stretched out this adolescent thing for a long time now. Considering that I turned 30 in March, a long time... It can be super fun considering that by all observable measures I've got my shit together, but at times I question how truly directed I am.

On Friday we were allowed to cut out of work at 3:30 due to the holiday weekend. I left at 3pm because I had plans. My boss had a vacant "oh, OK" look on his face when I asked for the early out. Whatever dude, it's a fucking holiday weekend. Go loosen that startch white collar shirt, have a couple martinis and get that deviant head.

I was out because my friend Rick, a 31 year old trader, had scored a stack of $26 tickets to Great America. The park was closed for all CBOT employees, their families and their coke head friends for the evening on discount. I hadn't gone to Great America since I went with my high school girlfriend in 1993. That was a long time ago. I was eager to jump on a few rollercoasters.

Traffic sucked on the ride up. Consider friday afternoon commuter traffic plus holiday weekend gridlock, plus typical asshole Illinois drivers doing 45 mph down the shoulder, and you've got 90 minutes sitting in traffic in what should take 45 minutes.

Finally there, Great America rocked. Rick and I rode up with his high school friend Matt and Pete, a couple other 30 year old adolescents. This can be fun and kind of lame at the same time. Fun in that Matt and Pete insisted that we find beer after the second coaster in order to calm our dazed heads and discombobled bodies, and lame in that both fuckers were high fiving and talking like a pair of 7th grade stroke offs (and saying they didn't want to cockblock) after I talked to some 847 skank in line for "Batman"... whatever dude. Cancel the Maxim magazine subscription... it's definitely not going to help you attempt to understand the fairer sex. Clueless. Anyways, Great America is the shit.

Saturday I returned to Wisconsin to chill. I went over to my friend Bob's place. Bob was a fucking badass back in the day:

(1) he'd slept with 15 girls before any of us had slept with one
(2) he usually had two girlfriends at once, and he'd walk down the school hallway with one while the other would see him and freak out. The girl was never pissed at Bob... always at the other girl
(3) his mom used to leave for the weekend with her boyfriend, and give Bob the keys to the new Baretta and $150 in cash. We'd spend that money on dinner, weed and liquor. Everyone partied at Bob's place every weekend.
(4) he used to walk around with a Marlboro reds box full of joints and hand them out
(5) during the winter he'd skip school 4 days out of 5 to go skiing. he drove a red 1979 camero and used to fill the tank and drive off from the same truck stop everyday.

That was 1989 through 1996.

In 2004, Bob is married with three daughters and his first son on the way. I'm Godfather to the youngest daughter Hailey. Where Bob was for the most part unhappy back in the day (he lost a leg to a motorcycle accident, spent time under house arrest for being an arson suspect, and spent over 100 days in one stretch for a 3rd drunk driving charge), he is content, happy and at peace today.

It's excellent to be his friend now, and we each value the friendship and longevity of the friendship, especially considering that our day to day lives couldn't be more different. Visiting him and seeing his spread plus our conversations occasionally make me question my direction and state of affairs. What can I say? I've got little control over what's really going on, I can only steer it in a favorable direction. At the same time, I'm psyched because I'm close to getting a trackbike, debating a wicked octopus tattoo on my left shoulder and I'm waiting on scoring an insane bag of kind bud in the next couple of days.

In my mind all of this rocks.