Saturday, June 15, 2013

Play Date!

My friend Brian boisterously approaches the lunch table with two cups in hand, calling out, "Who wants chocolate milk?"

"Me," says his first son.

"Me," says his second son.

"Me," says my son, for whom I did not purchase chocolate milk but only offered a cup of iceless tap water.  Abruptly, Andy realizes that the chances are decent that the chocolate milk is not for him.  He turns to me accusingly and pleads, "I want chocolate miiiiiiiiiilk!!!!!"


I go back up to the line to order Andy a chocolate milk.  I have acquiesced to the fact that, when on a play date, Andy shall receive what the other kids receive, from a harmless chocolate milk to that one time when he somehow ended up with a handgun license and a DVD of "Eyes Wide Shut." These are the rules of the play date.  For three hours, you get to be like every other kid.  Then it's home, where you're back to getting nothing.  Or the generic, dollar store equivalent of nothing.

I bring Andy his chocolate milk and fish a couple of hard little raisins out of the diaper bag for Alex, having arbitrarily decided that the rule of every kid being equal on a play date does not apply to babies or people named "Alex."  I sit back down, and marvel at the six of us for a moment, briefly wondering how long it will take for the fine employees of Smashburger to request that we leave.  There's food all over the floor, and the tabletop is a sticky mess.  The four boys are very loud, and Andy has immediately spilled part of his chocolate milk down the front of his shirt.  Andy and Brian's oldest son have been standing backwards in the booth, looking down at the people behind us, and I'm pretty sure I have seen Andy touch the lady's hair once or twice.  When we are finally approached by the manager, he politely remarks, "Just so you know, kids eat free on Monday night."  As in, "Do you own a calendar?  Does it look like Monday around here?"

So there's the noise and the boys and the terrific mess.  And then there's that surreal feeling of being with a friend you've known since high school.  Except instead of sitting in a coffee shop two blocks away from where you sleep in a twin bed in your parents' house beneath a pink wall all taped up with magazine pictures, you're having lunch with your two kids and his two kids one block away from the children's museum.  Instead of discussing the brightly hazy future, (What will college be like?  Will you have a second date with that girl from your photography class?  Do you think I should write novels for a living?  No, I probably don't want kids.), we talk about family, about the ones we have each created and the ones we came from.  It's all very early thirties (as in our ages, not the 1930s or the speed limit in the suburbs).

I have very few friends left from high school.  I think if I said I had three friends left from high school, I'd be stretching it.  There are only a handful of people in existence, worldwide, that have known me since the nineties (the 1990s, not an age or the the speed limit of the street you live on in Hell.)  Phrasing it this way makes those people sound special, selective.  Maybe they are.  Or maybe, more likely, I am just terrible about keeping friends, or I grow unlikable after a decade or so, or I can only take so much of any one single person.  Or I live in Volo, a cringe-inducing seventy-five miles from where I grew up and once knew everyone.

So there's only a couple people I know from high school, and getting together with them always produces a sort of time travel effect.  You knew me when, and I knew you when, and look at us now.  Who could have seen this coming, you the way you are and me the way I am?  Is this the inevitable, future version of ourselves?  I think it's easy to meet new people and present yourself the way you currently are.  The married mom with the two boys who worked at the bank last year and really likes wine and gossip.  But the people that knew you back before you had any idea of what you wanted or how your true self would emerge- those are the people that magnify your current life and make you remember your old one.

I mean this all in a positive way.

But, to go back to Brian, he is the only friend I still see from high school who has children.  Two boys, slightly older than my own two minis.  So, when we get together, the collision between past and present is even more enhanced and strange.  Who could have pictured Brian with these two little guys, so comfortable as a dad, walking into the children's museum while optimistically carrying just a single diaper and a few wipes- which he then casually sticks in the coat check?  Who could have pictured me with a double stroller, bribing one child with a cookie while unceremoniously dumping three scoops of powdered formula into a bottle set on the floor?  Is this the future that we discussed as teenagers? Is this the way our friendship was to grow and evolve- these parental, oft-interrupted conversations?  Our boys high fiving each other while we shout to be heard over the din they've created in the Smashburger after the museum?

I'm not quite sure either of us saw this part coming fifteen years ago.  But it's nice, and such a surprising and pleasant slice of future life.

After the burgers and the chocolate milk and the trips to the bathroom and the apologetic looks to the other diners, after the herding of four small boys out of the exit of the Smashburger, the six of us walk back to the parking garage.  We make plans to meet up again in a couple weeks.  The kids say good-bye, and we say good-bye, telling the other to say hi to his or her spouse for them.  Brian drives south, and I drive north.  My children fall asleep in the back seat, and I keep the radio low as not to wake them.  And then there's the whole metaphor of glancing in the rear view mirror, which I would have been quick to point out as a teenage soul in the 1990s, but now I just kind of ignore.

And when Andy wakes up an hour later, he asks for his friend, Brian's son, and some more damn chocolate milk.

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