Monday night we were social. As in, we had plans to go to a place that we had never been before to spend time together in the presence of other human beings by our own free will.
This seems totally normal to you, doesn’t it?
Likely because you’re not a newlywed who was uprooted from all of your friends and family and dropped, friendless, into southern Ohio. When you’re just married and want to continually bask in the presence of your spouse, and you know no one in your new hometown, and you’re trying to get your bearings and figure out the city, and you have to maintain a home for the first time, and secure a job, it’s hard to find the time or gusto to really get out there and spend time with, well, anyone other than your spouse. That just the way it is.
Monday night was a celebration for a co-worker’s last day at work. To properly see her off and wish her luck in her new endeavors, our department agreed to meet for Mexican food and a night of bowling. And we actually went. By now I’ve been working at the CMC for nearly six months, and in that time I’ve grown quite fond of my co-workers – quirks and all. We’ve bonded over our shared misery of stupid people. We always have a common ground – and that common ground is often tales of “Dude you won’t believe the tomfoolery I had to deal with today!” Oddly enough I’d say that mostly everyone who works in our department gets along swimmingly. But before Monday night I’d never hung out with anyone I work with outside of work, so seeing them in a social setting was really very fun.
We wolfed down tacos and enchiladas, we downed beer and margaritas, and we bowled until midnight. It was a good time, and while we were sitting at the table sipping beers waiting for our respective turns to bowl it dawned on me how cool it is that we are all so very different, brought together by the completely random happenstance of all being hired by the same place, but we can still laugh, and get along, and find things in common. None of us probably would have met otherwise, and if we had, who’s to say we’d have been friends or even thought we had anything in common with anyone else or have been able to find anything to talk about? It’s amazing what working with people day in and day out can do to bring people together and how it can, unexpectedly, work so well.
Just a thought.
And yes, Ted and I did have a wonderful time and it would behoove us to do this whole social thing more often. Party at our place? While we still have a place.
