hip hop gentlemen

too bad for the nice girls; too nice for the bad girls

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So many things are happening all at once. I can't keep track of what's been or is being said. I just want to drink in this moment, this feeling of - I can't find the right word for it - familiarity? The word is too diluted. Too distant. Although we don't share blood or a surname, I feel like I'm at a family reunion; meetings like these don't occur often enough. Though separated by time and space, I still feel connected to these people by some intangible, unbreakable bond. A motley assortment of characters thrown together by fate, and here we are almost eight years later, the fifteen of us, afflicting the other restaurant patrons with our mangled english and enthusiastic recollections. The inescapable fact is that we've changed in many ways: gotten fatter, taller, gone overseas, improved our english, gotten jobs, girlfriends, goals - grown up, I guess you could say. And then someone brings up the contents of a love letter that was written and discovered in sixth grade, and amidst the cacophonous laughter and half-hearted protests we find that we haven't really changed all that much. That we're still ourselves, and that that's okay.