"O-Ree-shard Lee!" They greeted me with my customary stupid nickname. I'm not quite sure how I acquired that particular one, but, then again, we all had our own stupid nicknames of unknown origins. One more indication that things hadn't changed.

A few more minutes of mindless banter, and we eventually got around to bowling. But the childishness continued. We were loud and obnoxious. We offered condescending advice when someone screwed up and gave grudging respect when someone bowled well. We made stupid jokes and laughed at everything and anything.

"Nice bowl. You almost got one that time."

"Shut up.... The ball was defective."

"Hey, I'll give you five bucks if you stick your hand down that ball return thing."

To any outsider, we probably resembled a bunch of teenage misfits--delinquents who never quite matured. And maybe we were. Maybe we should just grow up and act our age. Maybe it is futile to try and go back to something that's long past.

But the reality was that all of us had grown up. And we knew it. Amidst all the camaraderie and laughter, there was a shared realization that, indeed, things could not always stay the same. We knew that as we grew older, opportunities to go bowling together would become much scarcer. And no matter how hard we tried to conceal it, we all knew, deep down, that we were new people with new friends and new lives.

In that sense, our interaction that night wasn't an attempt really to regress towards adolescence. Nor was it an attempt to fight the inevitable. Rather, it was our way of telling each other that we still held those "good ole' days" close to our hearts. In our own unique way, we were paying tribute to a friendship by re-enacting its most memorable aspect.

Eventually, management did kick us out. Reluctantly, we gathered our belongings and headed out the door. I started to wonder if, thirty years from now, the four of us could still get together and play out the same script all over again.

"Shotgun."

"Hey, I already called it."

"I didn't hear you."

"Let's fight for it."

I wouldn't be surprised.

Richard S. Lee '01 is a social studies concentrator living in Pforzheimer House. This summer he is interning with the New York Civil Liberties Union and working on his bowling form. He tries not mix the two.