The One With Six Great Friends

Once upon a time, I used to kill time reading old Friends scripts online. It would crack me up as I visualized scenarios and scenes that, really, I could easily recite by heart.

On paper, every Friends episode has a title, each beginning with The One.

The One With the Christmas Armadillo.

The One With the Unagi.

The One With Chandler in a Box.

There are 233 more scripts in the vault, each with a title that begins with The One, each going on to describe the shenanigans of six late-twenties-early-thirties friends growing up together in mid-town Manhattan.

Friends was a Gen-X hit, mostly because all who tuned in could somehow relate to the storylines that came to us on those Must See TV Thursday nights.

Even if, really, our commonalities with the characters were far-fetched at best.

I don’t live in mid-town Manhattan.

I’ve never celebrated the holidays as a Christmas Armadillo, ‘practiced’ Unagi or lived in a box.

But I do have great friends.

And every now and then we will converge to have our own Friends moments, times when the banalities of life take a back seat to the realities of leisure… times when all responsibility is left behind with the kids at grandma’s place, or maybe on the pile of dirty laundry at home.

We did just that a weekend ago, three couples escaping to the deep(ish) woods—sans enfants—amazed by amenities that could easily make luxury look less-than-posh, for a two-day break from the grind we otherwise call real life.

Thus the title of this post—The One With Six Great Friends.

There’s a peculiar feeling that comes as you sit in silence in the car after you’ve just wished your children a pleasant weekend with their grandparents.

It’s not relief, because we love the little rugrats to death—oh, how much we do—and never could we envision life without them.

It’s more a feeling of reprieve, like the new recruit just granted a weekend furlough from boot camp, intent on making every last second count.

Parents with more than a month’s-worth of parenting under their belt will understand what I am saying.

Mine is not an indictment of my life as a dad, but instead an indication that from time to time, we yearn for the freedom that parenting ill-affords us—that small speck of time in which we can suspend ourselves from changing diapers, wiping spills, taming tantrums—and instead retreat to life as it was B.C.—Before Children—even if for just a fleeting day or two.

Because we need it.

We need those weekends where we come first, if only to remind ourselves of our relationship’s earliest roots, when it was only ever her and I, responsible only ever for ourselves, two souls that easily could adapt to every last one of our spontaneous whims.

We need those weekends where we can share parenting war stories among friends, the very people of our ilk, they who spend time in the trenches amidst the remnants of dirty diapers, dry puke and the odd three-week old sippy cup filled with fermenting milk.

We need those weekends, to be adults, to engage in conversations unfit for fragile ears, to recount dirty jokes and to muse aloud upon the true answer to one of life’s most perplexing questions—who’d you rather?—the smokin’ kindergarten teacher or the hot chick at the corner store.

And dammit, we need those weekends to so soak in the hot tub that we are reduced to six drunken giant human prunes by the time we emerge—two, three, or was it four hours later?

Because that’s what we did.

In a weekend that began with unnecessary detours, we took the circuitous route around our time alone.

We took the road less travelled. The one that saw us make every second count.

Six adults, six friends, indulging in the greatest indulgence parents of a combined eight kids could ask for—time off.

And as we did, we solidified the friendships that brought us there in the first place… and against the backdrop of much fun and frivolity created the storylines that would make for one truly epic Must See TV sitcom episode.

Its title?

The One With Six Great Friends.