Mr Al Young Dot Com

Last week I got together with 4 other friends to celebrate one of our friend’s 42nd birthday.  We went to Izzy’s Steaks and Chops in San Ramon.  This is not going to be a post on one of my favorite topics, fine dining.  I will just say this about my meal at Izzy’s, excellent.  The original Izzy’s is in San Francisco, and I am pleased that there is now a good, reasonably priced steakhouse in the East Bay.  I will definitely add it to my rotation of restaurants, particularly when I feel like steak.  If you go, I recommend the marinated skirt steak.  Very tender, and lots of flavor.

Ok, enough about food.   Unlike the other topics I normally cover such as real estate, personal finance, and sports, this post will be a little deeper than that.  I am going to discuss friendships and male bonding.  It is a tradition among the 5 of us to celebrate each other’s birthday by going out to dinner.  The birthday person gets to choose, and we pay for him.  We have been doing this for over 15 years.  Originally, we started out as a bible study group, but circumstances in our lives made it difficult to meet regularly.  So, we now just meet for birthday dinners, and a time to fellowship and catch up with one another.

Over the past 15+ years, many things have changed and many things have stayed the same.  We have grown older, put on a few pounds, and lost some hair.  We started off as single guys.  Now we are all married with kids.   One thing that has changed for the better is the quality of our meals.  When we were in our 20’s, the emphasis was on quantity, not quality of the meals.  So, we went to chain restaurants such as Chevy’s, or all you can buffets, but as the years go by, we started to appreciate the quality of the food.  Likewise, the price of our meals increased.  Many years ago, we could get away with a meal for around $20 a person.  This year, we hit an all-time high of over $70 a person.  I predict that in the next 5 years we will go over the magical $100 barrier.  Blame inflation and expensive tastes.  However, the price of friendships is priceless.

Now, we actually go to restaurants our wives would enjoy going to.  Fine dining, white tablecloths, nice ambiance, but instead of taking our wives, we dine with 4 other guys.  We get some flak on the home-front for that sometimes, but our wives don’t understand the importance of this time with the guys.  They think we are out wining and dining and shrinking our fatherly duties, but they don’t understand it is an important time for us to unwind and bond with the guys over a 5 star meal.

The other change besides the quality of our meals over the years is our topics of conversation.  When I come back from dinner, my wife sometimes ask what did we talk about, and I say “Not much”.  Its true we don’t have a lot of deep conversation, but that is the nature of guys.  We are not going to going all “Oprah” and weep openly.  When we were single, we talked about finding women and sports.  Now, we talk mostly about sports, but we also touch on topics such as our kids, jobs, and high cholesterol.  For guys, its not so much what you say to one another, but just being there for one another, as we have throughout the years. For guys, often the most meaningful communication is unspoken.

I have known these guys for over 25 years.  A few guys, I have known nearly my whole life.  We have grown up together, and shared many experiences such as getting and losing jobs, getting married, and having kids.  We have also supported each other through some family tragedies, and other difficult periods in our lives.  Through it all, we have continued to meet as a group to celebrate our birthdays. 

Even though our lives are constantly changing with demanding  jobs, and kids, we still continue to have our birthday dinners.  Despite the fact that our lives are always changing, some things remain the same.  We still complain about the price of the meal, and try to get the birthday boy to order the cheapest item on the menu.(he never does).  With our busy schedules, it sometimes takes a few months to coordinate a dinner, but we always seem to get around to it.  Like the bar in the TV show “Cheers”, it is comforting to be able to get together with a group of old friends regularly and be yourselves, knowing they will accept you and be there for you no matter what.  As I get older, I appreciate these friendships even more and know that they will be there for me if I need them.  I hope you too are blessed to have a group of close friends you have a special bond and can share your life with.