A few weeks ago one of my best friends reached the half-century mark, and I was determined that we were going to have the best 50th birthday party ever. Now i can say that, while it was absolutely one for the ages, it did not go down exactly as intended.
Image by David Domingo via Flickr
First of all, we all sort of acknowledged ahead of time that we were all too old to have that much debauchery at his 50th birthday party and decided we would just keep it to a few beers and some snacks with regard to the refreshments and music for the entertainment. That lasted for about two hours, when we realized that were having too good of a time to stop and had a couple of the designated drivers go out and buy more alcohol.
As the evening wore on, we started to play games with a set of “Irish” dice. The commands were such things as, “chug a beer while standing on one leg.” Needless to say, we started to get pretty sloppy, and a 50th birthday party that was supposed to be just a bunch of my buddy’s closest friends started becoming more like a frat party with everyone trying to out do each other in the way of stupidity.
We started to invent our own games, and it became more and more raucous as the night wore on. We ended up breaking a table, ordering two dozen pizzas and going through a couple of refrigerators full of booze before all was said and done. I would have never imagined anything like this for my friend’s 50th birthday party, and I was Scared that he was going to wake up the next day and be upset with me for all of the rowdiness and destruction from the night before.
Most of the guests decided to stay the night at my apartment, yet another way we acted like college students. We had people passed out on couches, in chairs and even on the floor. One of our more adventurous friends was slumbering away in the bathtub, holding the sign for the birthday boy’s 50th birthday party.
I asked my friend how he was feeling the next day, and he was pretty hung over. Thankfully, we were the first two people awake, so we got some coffee and tried to sober up a bit. We started to talk about the events of the previous night and I noticed that a smile was forming on his lips. I started to smile, too, and then we both burst into laughter.
I apologized and said I never meant for it to get that out of hand, and I was glad he was not mad at me. He pointed out that celebrating his 50th birthday party made him feel old at the start of the night, but as the night went on, he got to feel young again. He told me it was a birthday he would never forget.
