These moments...these moments...

Trafton B.

May 4, 2011 - 8:49 PM

We have a funny little saying, or inside joke if you will, amongst our friends. Whenever there's something fun, exciting, or particularly memorable going on, someone will lock eyes with another person - whether they're sitting next to each other or on opposite sides of the room - and they'll point downwards with our index finger as if tapping on an invisible table and say, "These moments...these moments..." Everyone that notices it will have a quick, hardy chuckle and then we'll just continue on with our respective conversations. You might say it's our way of simultaneously living in the moment and recognizing or reflecting on its gravity.

To illustrate the point I'll provide some recent times when this activity occurred; that's sort of why I'm writing about this anyways.

At the backyard barbeque with the parents last Saturday, Leslie got my attention later in the evening while we were sitting around the bonfire. She didn't even have to say the words. I just caught the hand motion out of the corner of my eye, and started cracking up right in the middle of a conversation with Ross' parents. This moment was made even more hilarious when I discovered that she'd apparently been trying to get my attention all night. I guess I was just a little bit too much in the moment.

Another recent occurrence was at our orphans' Easter Sunday brunch. It happen somewhere after the pseudo-failed Easter egg hunt and before the collective food coma fully set in, before we'd completely sunk into the couch, that is. If I remember correctly, there was a solid sixty seconds where the conversations stopped and the only audible noises were the sounds of our stomachs churning followed by lethargic groans. I threw out a quick "these moments..." and everyone started laughing.

I've forgotten where and when this tradition started to be honest, but it really doesn't matter in the long run. According to Leslie it started at Emma and Emily's apartment at the end of last summer. Leslie was obviously the person that started it. There's no dispute about that. We were probably sharing a similar moment of sleep deprivation/food induced laughter, a common incidence for McAlister & Friends, when Leslie said aloud, "Guys, it's these moments that I'm going to remember when I think back to college." Then, after a moment of stunned silence, we all burst with laughter at the tackiness of Leslie's sentiments.

Since then it's been condensed down into just "these moments," and it probably comes up at least once a week. It may have been sappy and cliché at the time, but it nonetheless has worked its way into our ever-growing lexicon of stories and inside jokes, which I seem to be informally compiling in this blog.

Anyways, there were a few more "these moments..." today that I feel the need to cover for the sake of keeping them fresh in my memory.

Today marked the first day of the biannual ASUO Street Faire on campus, an event that is usually characterized by masses of students walking up and down 13^th Street enjoying the miscellaneous custom t-shirt vendors, poster tents, Bonzai trees stands, and so forth. Today the sunshine was out, it was almost seventy degrees and the smell of pad thai and patchouli oil filled the air. These moments....

Later in the afternoon we had an impromptu game of kickball at Washington Park. Only eight of us showed up, and one of us didn't feel like playing, so it wasn't the greatest game of kickball, per say, but it was definitely amusing. After thirty minutes of constantly running the bases (because it's really difficult not to hit a homerun with only three people on defense) we ended up playing SPUD, a much more manageable game. These moments...

I'm sure there are more moments yet to be had, so keep you eyes out for them. I probably won't refer to them as such in the blog, but now you all know a little bit more about our group of friends and I hope you're beginning to understand how grateful we are to know each other. We only get to have one college experience, undergraduate that it. I think it goes without saying that we have all made the most of ours, and we have our friends and these moments to thanks for that.

Thanks for reading.