Just Visiting...

I went to the get together for my friend Abby yesterday afternoon. It was so awesome to see people you haven't seen for years. I must say, for the competitive nature of the crowd (there were people there from competing radio companies Bonneville and Emmis), we radio people can be a friendly lot. I guess it is a fraternity of sorts. I think Abby would have appreciated a nice dust up, though, that was her sense of humor. It got me thinking how we really don't get to see the ones we care about enough. My Mom would go "visiting" many nights. She would make sure our homework was done after school and after dinner would pack us (my sister and me) to go "visiting". We would go see either someone in the family or a close friend. They would sit and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and leave us kids to figure out how to occupy our time. We would play or watch TV. She did this a lot. And on Sunday night it was either church our tagging along while my father (who was an old man) and his old man friends would bowl on a Sunday night league. They would drink heavily (what the hell are highballs, anyway?)and smoke massively. We even had little uniforms made to match Dad's. How frigging humiliating that I STILL HAVE MINE! We did this week after week, never missing a Sunday night (my mom didn't believe in babysitters). How did my mom find the energy or the time? I guess drinking all that coffee will do it. It's too bad that we can't find the time or the energy in our lives, hell, sometimes I have trouble returning emails.