Homemade High School Reunion

I spent Saturday night sitting around a table with Andres, Mark, and my father. I made lasagna, garlic bread and salad, and we drank some of Mark's homebrewed ESB. Olaiya and Cher cleared out after dinner and left us boys to sit around and bullshit.

One of my mother's favorite reminiscences involves how all my friends learned how to "be men" by sitting around our dining room table with my dad, playing poker and staying up as late as we could. A better writer would remember (or invent) some examples of the very important kinds of things we talked about, or how we learned about human behavior and our own character through the rituals of the poker table. And that stuff is probably even true.

But for Saturday night, it was enough to be in the company of those guys... to laugh about events long past and present day. And it was good to hear my dad joking with Mark about homemade napalm and ammonium nitrate disasters... And with Andres about the perils of working for Micro$oft.

Bob will off soon... back to Mexico. So we probably won't have the chance to do it again, but maybe I'll have to invite some guys over for a poker game sooner rather than later. I do miss hanging in til the river on a game of hi-lo seven card stud... raising like a maniac to chase off the weak of heart... just hoping to filch half the pot by guessing which way everyone else is going.