The Package Tour of Friendship

I’ve got loads of friends that came into town yesterday, and even more (my boys), on a plane as we speak, are due in this afternoon. And here I am, on the couch, practically napping. It’s amazing to me how content I am, just sitting here, not being out. That’s really messed up, right?

So I know this much about myself: I love a good, quiet, sit. Maybe a sit on my own, maybe one or even two others, but no more. It’s the quiet I like, or maybe the thoughtful. But even as I write this, I find myself scowling. I don’t think of myself as a quiet person, exactly. You know what it is, it’s wit. I like wit. You can’t be witty in the loud because someone inevitably yells something that distracts everyone and entirely breaks the rhythm wit depends upon.

I like knowing that my friends are close by, but I’m happy to not be around them. That can’t possibly work. It’s not that I don’t want to see them, I do, but that so many of them, all at once…it feels a bit like some pre-packaged holiday, fourteen countries in ten days, that’s seven hours in Paris.

Seven hours is not enough for Paris, just as a few minutes, here and there, is not enough with my friends. Of course, the obvious reply is, “It’s silly to avoid all of your friends just because you can’t really focus on any one of them.” Not only that, but I realize that part of the fun of friends is having them all together.

So really, I may just be lazy. I’ve considered this. All those friends means a lot of energy, and besides that, them, a exhausted girlfriend, and never quite recovering from yesterday’s hangover, well, I might just be tired.

In the end, it would be ridiculous, and absolutely so, to avoid them much longer.

But wait. Let me go back to my original point. I know about myself that I need time to be alone. It’s how I recharge. I can just imagine, as it was yesterday, being out at about with my large group, surrounded by a thousand large groups in the concert setting of the park, and being exhausted, and when, afterwards, will I get my time to rest? What if it ruins me to the night that I think I think I’m looking forward to?

No no, I just need a little activity. My friends are in town, after all, and if I don’t go to play with them, well, that’s not very friendly of me, and I may just as well be the sort of lonely guy who writes out a piece while everyone’s calling him to join.