Fall, my favourite way to go down the stairs and coincidentally my favourite time of the year.
By: Love Sex, Other Drugs
Tags: Thanksgiving, Friends, Friendsgiving, Humor, Wine

FALL

Fall, my favourite way to go down the stairs and coincidentally my favourite time of the year. Let me explain this to you after Halloween when November rolls around it’s just a smooth sailing month into the ever so dreaded “home for the holidays”. For young people those last few weeks before the semester break are great especially since most of your exams are only after you come back from holidays. Therefore you can sit back kick your feet up and watch the leaves fall from the trees along with your standards, motivation, and good judgment. I couldn’t quite tell you the scientific reasoning for this but you get what I mean it’s kind of like the last couple moments of freedom until you have to go back home and act like a sober virgin in front of mom and dad.

Apart from the going out and lack of academic motivation during this time of the year there is one little holiday which me and my friends hold very dear, Friendsgiving. It’s one of those rare days in the year apart from birthday’s that me, my friends and their current significant others manage to all sit at one table under one roof.

Whilst most of my friends had already known each other for ages Lucy was the one I had known the longest out of all of them. She was somewhat the closes thing I had to a childhood friend she was like family to me. She was the person who could narrate my coming of age story. She was by my side for pretty much all my fists, first time, first blackout, first high, you name she was by my side. It was only appropriate that we hosted Friendsgiving at hers, her flat in Kensington or as we liked to call it the traphouse. Because despite our one off evening of wine, roast turkey and board games we usually did most of our after parties here which went well over 3 days with a wide range of characters entering and leaving the apartment throughout that time.

On my way I stopped by the Marks & Spencer near her flat with Alexa to stock up on wine and some basic sides. I think it’s quite obvious that as 2 single not so domesticated girls living in London we have no idea how to cook anything but pasta nor eat anything that doesn’t come out of a takeaway box. As we passed by the young women with children and lululemon tracksuits I looked down at our cart filled with wine bottles and snacks, vs their carts filled with kale juice and asparagus. I found myself thinking about the contrast between our two worlds. When I looked at these put together women a thought crossed my mind. Was it just a gap in age or a gap in mindset and did the two correlate? I couldn’t help but think what is the cut off age? Do we ever stop being young and having fun or does our idea of what’s fun just change? Alexa’s phone rang it was Lucy “where the fuck are you guys yalla lets drink”. When we paid and left I remember caring the bags of wine which weighed a ton, I felt like my twig arms were going to snap, keep in mind this is the most exercise I had done since mandatory PE in high school.

As I entered the front door and put the wine in the fridge I was greeted by a tipsy Lucy and her girlfriend, I could see the anticipation in her eyes. Lucy was fun drunk, fun for everyone, everyone apart from her girlfriend who inevitably would end up having to babysit Lucy’s drunk ass. We all sat in the living room and Alexa put her bag on the table, whenever Alexa brought her goody bag to a function you knew shit was about to go down. Alexa owned every drinking game on the face of earth you name it she had it. We decided to play drunk stoned or stupid a classic. The whole game thing didn’t last long since we ended up getting wasted halfway through the starters. We never really managed to make it to the desert during friends giving. As we progressively became inoculated we all started roasting each other and bringing up embarrassing moments of our past. This is something we are very accustomed to and it’s a critical part of all of our friendships, it’s basically our idea of fun. The only problem here is that when your significant other is sitting at the dinner table and your friends are bringing up that one time on thanksgiving where you got fingered in a bathroom at your local bar, its sure to cause a little argument on your way back home. On that evening Alexa had invited her ‘guy best friend’ let’s call him Fred. I really don’t care what you say but your ‘guy best friend’ or ‘girl best friend’ will always be in love with you. That’s just a fact, they’re basically your failed talking stages. As we were spit balling these fun statements he sat on the couch the entire time with a stoic expression. I guess you could say he was not having a blast. One by one the couples started to leave, towards midnight there were just a few people left. Alexa Maya and I helped Lucy and her girlfriend clean up a bit. As we all sat at the table before going back home I felt filled with warmth these idiots gave me something to be thankful for every year.

I once read somewhere “Find what you’d die for and then live for it” I use to interpret this as a hungry desire for a goal or monumental achievement. Its only now that I realise these people, my friends, my family, my loved ones. These are the people I would die for and ironically they keep me alive. Every day through the good and the bad, they are my support system, my safety net. So I guess you could say I have more than one blessing to give thanks for.