Superficiality Central

Wednesday Night before Thanksgiving is one of my favorite nights of the year. Since Turkey day is a non religious and national holiday, almost everyone in America descends on their hometown to celebrate with their family. This combination of circumstances is what creates the phenomenon of Thanksgiving Eve, the biggest party night outside of New Years. As many of you may know I am form a small town in CT named Southbury. This relatively small town has a local Mexican place called Senor Panchos, which is where all of my ex-high school classmates prefer to go to celebrate this evening. Now that I have set the scene, let me discuss my experience throughout the night.

So this evening started around 9ish, when I drove over to my good friend Dustin's house, about a mile away. Dustin and I would both be drinking heavily this evening because we had a designated driver, who also it the biggest Spurs fan I have ever met. (Dating back to the pre-Duncan days) Now I know the idea of a designated driver sounds rather corny, but since Southbury isn't exactly packed with a raging nightlife, the police in town tend to be in full force, and preying on the patrons who leave this bar after last call.

Now before Dustin and I left for Senor Panchos we were invited to his neighbors house to have a few drinks before we left. Dustin's next door neighbor's name is Vickey. Vickey was a close friend of mine in high school, and someone who I really enjoy seeing every time I come home. If I saw her more often I would imagine she would crack into my "top ten friends list" quite easily, but unfortunately I see her about once a year. I wanted to go over there badly to see her, some of the other girls and guys who I actually still care about / want to see from high school, but Dustin had his doubts, mainly because he didn't want to run into ex-girlfriends and others whom he didn't want to particularly see until he had a couple alcoholic beverages. It was then I started to realize, that this evening might as well been November 22, 2000, instead of 2005, so everyone break out your Sisqo CD's and lets go watch our "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" VHS.

So instead of going to Vickey's Dustin and I arrived at Senor Panchos. Now a lot has changed in my life since high school, but going back to this bar filled with these people brought me back into my insecure/mailbox destroying/bad dressing days of high school, as I felt very awkward for about 30 minutes. As time passed though I stopped feeling like 2000 Matt, and was back to my 2005 MattyB"ness". The 3 reasons why this was easy were as follows:

1)I feel I have been very successful, compared to many of the people I graduated with. I know this sounds Pompous and vain, but some people I saw were still stuck in the same rut and lifestyle they were in back when O-Town was popular.

2) I identified the people I wanted to interact with and made a point to talk to them for over 90% of the night.

3) I have gotten very good at being totally superficial to people I have no interest in. Like I rally only was intereted with seeing about 7-10% of the people that were there. The rest of the people I played up my "no eye contact with them" role, and "if they come up and talk to me, I will talk only about superficial and common things while just trying to end the conversation and get away" role to perfection. Nothing like living in NYC for 2 months, to make you know how to act like a dick.

Now I know it may seem that I am bitter and didn't enjoy myself this evening, but nothing could be further from the truth, as the trip down memory lane was so much fun. I want to explicate more on this night, but the effects of alcohol make my memories much less vivid. The night ended in a very high school fashion, in my friend Jim's basement. Jim's basement serves a similar function as the one in "That 70's show," as no matter what happened throughout the evening, most nights/events ended there. On a side note Jim and I talked about real estate investing for a good 15-20 minutes. Jim has such a good entrepreneurial spirit, and I really think he will be an excellent asset for me for advice as I plan to invest in real estate in the future. I really should get him to play Cashflow sometime too. He would love it.