They say youth is wasted on the young. I got a text from my pal Don, who was hosting a bunch of my fraternity brothers at his place for a reunion/mancation. They were watching old videos from college and screenshotted me. It wasn’t a picture of me doing donkey kicks on the roof, shirtless and smashing bottles, no it was much worse. It was me playing guitar.
Oh God, I had blocked that part of my life out. I haven’t worn a baseball cap in about 10 years (look at Trump wearing one with a suit at his rallies, that’s what I feel I look like with hats now). The necklace should serve only one purpose – to choke me out from behind when I started singing whatever song I had learned that day. The frat shirt screams “Stay away from this guy, he’s probably drunk and thinks his 20 year old opinion is important…and he says curse words in front of children.”
I showed my wife and she said, “Who’s that?” Me. “You were skinny once?” Thanks, my dear. Back then, I drank 60 beers a week and ate all my meals off an industrial grill that was soaked in the cooking oil called Whorl. I weighed 190 on a bad day. Now I ate tuna packs for lunch and run several times a week. If I have one shitty meal, I go pants shopping. I couldn’t grow facial hair then; this week I found a white eyebrow hair that was over two inches long. I used to bitch if I had a term paper or exam in a given week; now if I have 35 minutes of uninterrupted time without a chore, house project, dirty diaper or unattended responsibility, I tell people it was “a nice relaxing day.” I want to go back in time and wait until that young obnoxious jackass says, “I’m bored!” and beat him unconscious with that B.C. Rich acoustic like the Honky Tonk Man used to do to Macho Man Randy Savage. At least everyone in the Phi Tau house 1998-2001 would have been spared hours of half assed Alice in Chains on a poorly tuned guitar.
To put this all in perspective, when I was in college our pledges had to interview us to get to know the actives. One popular question was “What’s your favorite beer?” My answer? “I really like the Plank Road beers.” Yes, the famed microbrewers Plank Road, makers of Red Dog dirty 30 packs and Icehouse, liquid crack beer. “Does it come in a 30 pack for $9 or have 5.9% ABV? Then that’s the finery I demand from my lager.” Of course, now there’s a 52% chance I’ll still say Busch Light, so maybe things haven’t changed too much. No, looking at that picture, they have.