Posts tagged with "friendship"

Cranium Party, the Third

So out of the 26 peo­ple I invit­ed to the third Cranium Party, 9 said they could­n’t make it, 13 said they’d come, and 4 did­n’t RSVP at all.

Out of the 13 peo­ple who said they’d come, only 3 of them showed up, and one of those was Jessica, who was sort of co-host­ing this one with me, so fuck yeah she was there1.

That means that includ­ing me, we had four peo­ple, which is the bare min­i­mum to play Cranium.

To say I was dis­ap­point­ed is an under­state­ment. I spent a great deal of time and ener­gy mak­ing the invi­ta­tions, and clean­ing the house so my guests could be com­fort­able. Not to men­tion all the food I bought, most of which went bad because there weren’t enough peo­ple to eat it (and espe­cial­ly when the guests who do show up also bring plen­ty of snacks).

We did end up play­ing a good game, but it was entire­ly not worth all the prepa­ra­tion.

Jessica offered to host the next one at her place — very nice of her because that real­ly means she’s offer­ing to shoul­der all the respon­si­bil­i­ties — but I feel like Cranium par­ties are my thing. An invi­ta­tion is not only an invi­ta­tion to play, it’s an invi­ta­tion into my social cir­cle. The guest list is tight­ly con­trolled; any­one on it is either a very close friend, or some­one I can tell has the poten­tial to be. I want to have all the respon­si­bil­i­ty, because it’s one of the ways I can show these peo­ple they’re impor­tant to me.

At the same time, some peo­ple are already ask­ing about the next one2, which I find strange because the impres­sion I get is that it’s a low pri­or­i­ty, nev­er some­thing peo­ple put in their sched­ule and plan around. I’m pret­ty sure most only go if noth­ing else comes up on that day.

That’s fine by me — not every­one loves doing bad impres­sions of Christopher Walken as much as I do — but when peo­ple say they’re going to be there and don’t show up, it’s a com­plete deval­u­a­tion of my efforts. I’m seri­ous­ly ques­tion­ing if I’m going to host anoth­er Cranium par­ty any time soon. If I do, the next invite list will undoubt­ed­ly be much short­er.

At the very least, the day was sal­vaged with some bub­ble tea, Chinese food, and qual­i­ty time with Jessica.

  1. She’s also the only per­son to make it to all Cranium par­ties up to now. [↩]
  2. I pur­pose­ly don’t make them a reg­u­lar thing because I want them to be spe­cial. [↩]

Letters to Girls Mothers

I’ve been try­ing to write a let­ter to her moth­er. Something like this:

I was going to stop by on my last trip to Toronto, but part of me real­ized it may have made things com­pli­cat­ed, since it’d be the first time since we stopped talk­ing to each oth­er. Not that I was scared you would take a side, but because I did­n’t want you to think I was forc­ing that deci­sion on you.

All I want to say is that I miss all of you ter­ri­bly, she was spe­cial, and it’s a pity things did­n’t work out. But it was much beyond our con­trol. I don’t know if either of us will ever grow out of these dif­fer­ences that hold us back.

The last time I came to vis­it, it was almost 2pm on a Tuesday and you were both at work. I scratched a note on the back of a notepad to let you know I stopped by, and she told me you liked me so much, you stuck it on your fridge. That always meant a lot.

Thanks for every­thing.

But all of it comes out sound­ing defen­sive. I wish I could explain how I’m not angry but sad, which is a tes­ta­ment to how great they were. I can’t fig­ure out how to put the ball in their court, to let them know that if they’re okay with it, and she’s okay with it, we can still be friends. I real­ly don’t know how appro­pri­ate that would be any­way.

Sometimes, the hard­est part of giv­ing up the girls is giv­ing up their par­ents too.

Super Bowl Sunday

Thumbnail: Aaron pumps gas

We cov­er a lot of ground on the dri­ve, stuff I would­n’t admit to just any­one. It’s good to have a set amount of time for some one on one. We see each oth­er at par­ties, but it’s nev­er time by our­selves.

Thumbnail: Rob's lair

We get there a few hours ear­ly because it isn’t so much about the game as hang­ing out with the two friends I don’t see enough. There’s a cool­er full of snow and beer, and the food is com­ing in pro­tein; pigs-in-blan­kets, ground beef nachos, chick­en fin­gers, crab dip, meat balls.

Thumbnail: Cradle

For a night, I’m with guys who punch arms, exchange ver­bal jabs, and laugh at blue col­lar jokes. Two lit­tle girls run around, and no one ever lets that change them. Now they’re fathers, but they’ll always be real men.