Fun, fun, fun

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

It’s hell to get old. I mean, it’s not usually something we have to meet eye to eye, but I was sure confronted by it time after time this weekend. When I got to this town back in 1984, I was a 22-year-old know-nothing from the Midwest. I was pretty much a complete human being, an adult, so to speak. I was a bartender and wastrel, and Reno and I could not have made a better fit.

So, anyway, this weekend my longtime buddy Dave “Opie” Hilley blew into town with his lovely wife, Deanna, from a several months long cross-country tour. Way back, Opie and I used to tear this place apart. Friday, we ran across some other friends in various bars, including lots of people we worked with at the original Eddie’s Fabulous ’50s.

We had a blast, lots of old times to remind each other of. The conversations have not changed: women, booze, politics. It was exactly like no time had passed at all. Opie’s smile, voice and laugh are exactly the same.

But here’s the thing: I’m not that guy anymore. Twenty years have intervened—20 years, a phthp in geologic time—and I can no longer upend Diet Buds for six or seven hours straight. I had to call an end to the party (fortunately, another good friend, Michael, showed up just in time to deliver the whole bunch of us to my house before I did something stupid. Or more likely a series of somethings stupid, since that’s the way it usually works.

We spent Saturday night recovering at home. Didn’t even cook, ordered a pizza.

My friends all have gray in their beards. My friends all carry wrinkled luggage under their eyes. So do I.

How is it possible that I still feel 17?

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