Eighteen Years



This weekend, me and my college barkada will be having a little get-together, just out of the blue. I thought at first it was just another dinner to spend with the gang, just another time to throw around old war stories, get updated on present goings-on and laugh about this or that issue. It was only when one friend texted me saying that the dinner was to celebrate our eighteen years of knowing each other that I suddenly got floored.

EIGHTEEN YEARS. Man.

That's a long time.

Man.

I still consider myself 'young', but that's mainly because of my own personal outlook, my continual resistance to 'growing up' and wearing 'grown-up' clothes and taking on a 'grown-up' personality and manners. I still wear collar-less t-shirts regularly to work. I still wear jeans and sneakers or rubber shoes. I still love to laugh out loud, have fun with stupid stuff and play frickin' videogames. But even so, I have to realize that I've been on this earth for more than three decades.

And more than half of that time, I've enjoyed and spent with these guys.

Times spent learning useless shit in UP, walking endless kilometers to the next class, toiling away on this or that plate, consoling each other when we were down (though I usually do the consoling), sweating it out in CMT and feasting on fast food whenever we got the money to spare. Since then, into our working, professional lives, we've still kept in touch, seeing each other grow and change and not change. Awesome.

Friends have come and gone, but these guys remain, and God willing, they'll always be there. And I'll always be there for them.

Man.

Eighteen years.