There are people you have dinner with.
And there are people you accidentally end up in another state with.
Know the difference.
The second group usually has better stories.
Every group has that one person. The one who can take a perfectly reasonable Saturday and completely screw it up in the best possible way.
This particular Saturday was supposed to be simple.
Football game. Tailgate. Couple beers. Home at a respectable hour.
Adult behavior.
We even had a plan.
Then somebody showed up with a cooler big enough to survive a small natural disaster.
That should have been the first clue.
By noon, the parking lot was alive. Music coming from somewhere. Grill smoking. Somebody two rows over was losing badly at cornhole and disputing the rules like there was prize money involved.
Nobody was looking at their phone.
Nobody was wondering what they should be doing.
We were exactly where we wanted to be.
Then someone said it.
“We should stay tonight.”
There it was again.
We should.
The most dangerous two words in the English language when spoken around the right people.
Normally, this is where adulthood intervenes.
Hotels are expensive.
Nobody packed anything.
Someone has something to do tomorrow.
There are dogs. Kids. Work. Responsibilities.
All excellent reasons to behave ourselves.
For about eleven seconds, we considered them.
Then somebody pulled out a phone.
“I found rooms.”
Another beer opened.
Someone looked around the group.
And there are moments in life when you realize democracy has failed.
Nobody actually needs to vote.
You already know.
Fuck it. Let’s go.
The game became dinner.
Dinner became another place.
Another place became a story that gets slightly less accurate every time somebody tells it.
And somewhere along the way, the thing we were supposedly there for stopped being the thing that mattered.
It wasn't the game.
It wasn't the tailgate.
It wasn't the hotel we hadn't planned on needing.
It was the people.
Because the right people change the gravity of a moment.
A beer becomes a night.
A game becomes a weekend.
A stupid idea becomes the story everybody is still laughing about five years later.
That's the part we sometimes miss when we're busy trying to build a good life.
We think about where we want to go.
What we want to do.
What we want to accomplish.
But some of the best parts of your LYFE aren't places at all.
They're people.
The ones who show up.
The ones who make you laugh harder.
The ones who make ordinary days slightly dangerous.
The ones who don't need six months of planning to have a good time.
And especially the ones who occasionally remind you that tomorrow can take care of itself for a minute.
Someday you won't remember what the hotel cost.
You probably won't remember who picked up the second round.
Hell, depending on the night, you might not remember the second round.
But you'll remember who was sitting next to you when somebody looked around the table and said:
“We need to do this more often.”
Those are your people.
Keep them close.
That's the LYFE.