Friends and Fatigue

I spent the last twenty-four hours with my best friends from high school. I always enjoy our get-togethers. They usually consist of catching up, reminiscing, socializing, and making music. We are, after all, confreres of the legendary – a term usually reserved for deceased musicians – folk group, The Balladeers.

Part I was an overnighter at Gary Chicoine's. We chatted, dined, bragged about our children, and I coached him on his banjo playing, resumed after a 44-year hiatus. He is playing well, due less to my coaching and more to his resurrection of past skills. Next day we joined Mike Burak and John Gunther at Mike's for Part II. This gathering featured Mike's handcrafted, pH 1.8 chili con carne, our usual minstrelsy, and a spirited round robin of joke telling where successive jokes were often conjoined by a common theme. I myself offered a joke of my own creation. It did, I must say, receive a response as glorious as the period at the end of this sentence. My setup was complex and protracted, I forgot some essential details, and it was a pun, a pun so fetid that it didn't merit even the customary groan. We had a grand time.

I returned home exhausted. I love these guys, but there is a kind of intensity to being with them that consumes energy and demands sharp mental focus. It's the same kind of happy fatigue I often get after spending time with my family. Maybe it's because these relationships are so important that I want to remember and savor every experience. Maybe it's because I want to make the best possible impression. Either way, it's a small price to pay for the love and solace of family and friends.