Old times

Well, college fraternity reunions are interesting things. Woke up at 3 a.m. so I could drive to Evanston to pick up another buddy/brother, and then off to O'Hare for the o-dark early departure. Met up with another brother at O'Hare, and off we went to the homeland.
On arrival, had to make an early In-n-Out Burger run (a franchise sorely missed here in Chicago.) Double-double, fries and chocolate shake-only thing better is a Tommy burger with the chili dripping everywhere. Since we were catching a schoolbus filled with kegs to the Rose Bowl later, had to forego Tommy's in the name of intestinal self-preservation. Nobody in their right mind would load up on Tommy's knowing that he'd have to find a usable toilet at the Rose Bowl later in the day.
We then drank our asses off for the next 15 hours.
The guys are almost uniformly successful. Lawyers, doctors, investment bankers-these guys are approaching their professional peaks and are an amazingly able and productive group. And as soon as the boozing began we all reverted to our default setting-fraternity drinking machines. There were drunken scenes and declarations of love and affection (kinda nerve-wracking for some of the straight guys-we had a lot of guys come out of the closet after graduation), competition for the unattached women, and extremely long BS sessions lasting until about 3 a.m.
What had changed: hairlines, waistlines and bathroom lines (much longer since a lot of the guys were puzzlingly reluctant to piss outside the bathrooms-you'd think they were trying to protect their reps or something.) Additionally, conversation was far more mature. Topics usually included jobs, partners, wives, children and portfolios, not to mention divorces, the next guy coming out of the closet, and a certain guy raising quintuplets or quads on his own after his partner left him.
Now you know why we didn't stop drinking.
What had not changed: the amount of booze consumed (far too much), the amount of boasting pertaining to said consumption (more than enough), and the filthy songs that were summoned forth from the bottomless memories of the brotherhood (certainly too much for my 18 month-old daughter to ever hear.)
It was a great weekend.