Those of you who have known me for a long time know that I was a quite the party animal in college. I thought the worst thing on the face of the Earth was staying in on a Friday or Saturday night. I would never say no to a drinking challenge (or any challenge) and I was the loudest, craziest person at most of our parties. But, I've kind of 180'd over the last few years.
This weekend I was with a group of my college rugby friends up in NH for the weekend and it was the 7th year in a row we've all gone up to the same house and had beer olympics and lit off fireworks and drank late into the night. But it's a lot different now than when we first started. I can't drink like I did when I was 21, nor do I want to try anymore, so I was almost dreading beer olympics. Turns out, I wasn't the only one who was apprehensive so we substituted some of the shotgunning and chugging themed events for more casual events like cornhole where you just have a drink in your hand.
When we started this 7 years ago I would be up drinking until 3 am, nap for a few hours and then be the first one up again in the morning to go waterskiing and start back up with my drinking. This year I was so proud of myself for staying awake past midnight on Friday night (and I made it until 2 am, I was very proud) but I was still the first person to go to sleep. When we got up the next day, we all got off to a slow start. We spent over an hour making breakfast and then sitting around the table talking before we really got into the day. We didn't make any morning boat runs for skiing or wakeboarding and didn't make it into the lake at all until almost noon. Beer olympics lasted for about 2 hours instead of 5 hours of competitive drinking.
Everyone has slowed down and matured a little but I think the change is most drastic in me because I was such a wild child and now I am perfectly content spending my weekend watching netflix or going to the bike path with my dogs. I know my friends are sometimes a little disappointed in how "lame" I've become but my life has just changed so much. I was the first one to get married and my life is just really settled now, our lives are all in really different places and we all have different goals. But one thing that hasn't changed is my love for this group of friends, and I couldn't imagine not getting together with them every year for our annual lake weekend and Friendsgiving traditions.
Sorry I was the first one asleep and I could only handle a scaled-back version of beer olympics but thanks for putting up with me and still loving me friends! Things are only going to keep changing more over the years but it's nice to know that there are some things that will always be the same.
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