ARTHA - Old Times

I've been thinking a lot about "old times" recently. You know, the days when you didn't have any responsibilities and would pack up your friend's blue volvo, light a cigarette and drive for hours listening to Dave Matthews, or if you believed yourself to be especially complicated, early Radiohead.

After a recent visit from my "old times" crew, I've been thinking about those days. People always reference their college years not to demonstrate the achievement of a higher education, but as an experience from which one now compares one's life. "I can't drink like I did in college." "It's not as easy to meet people as it was in college" or "It would have been easier to beat this rape charge back in college."

I've been thinking about what is it about those times that was so special. Perhaps it was the unique combination of youth, just enough responsibility to make you feel productive, and a tiny bit of money. The stuff of long days of doing whatever it was we felt like. A favorite plan during my "old times" was to take epic road trips to uncommon destinations like Mobile, Alabama or Nashua, New Hampshire. We would drive for hours smoking cigarettes and drinking that bad flavored coffee you can only get at a gas station. Somebody was always playing guitar and someone always had a frisbee. These were important props in our lives.

And each of us had our own role to play during those days - like characters in a comedy. I find there are days I am still shedding the skin of that role 8 years later. But during those years, it fit me just fine. Cause we were all a part of something larger than each of us as individuals; an experience in growing up that was unique to us because we believed ourselves to be the only ones interested in truth, adventures, and figuring out who we were.

So now, as I approach the milestone of another decade, I am reminded of the days when I wanted nothing more than to see a blue volvo pull around the corner or just to hear one more folk song before going to bed. And for a moment, I am again the 22 year old who wrote terrible love poems and believed the best thing in life was the company of my best friends and a good story.

Ahh, good times, indeed.