Surprises

Have you ever had one of those out of left field, totally surprisingly wonderful events happen? I hope so, because I recently had one and let me tell ya-they're great.

It's the kind of event that sneaks up on you that are the best. Don't get me wrong, a happy moment in the middle of a shitty day is great, fantastic in fact, but whenever you remember that great part it will always be linked with the shitty day in some part.

What I'm talking about are the moments that come in the middle of an already good time. Let me break it down for you.

As you know I currently reside in this wonderful metropolis that is the Windy City. But I haven't always lived here. In fact, I'm currently contemplating not living here, but that's a blog for another time. When I moved here I tried to keep in touch with old friends but I pretty much sucked at it. If it weren't for Facebook, I don't think anyone would know what I was up to these past few years. And if it weren't for Facebook, I wouldn't have nearly the amount of "friends" I have today. See FB is famous for dredging up every single person you've ever run into in your life and reconnecting you with them. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes this is creepy. But most of the time, from my experience, it's usually pretty uneventful. Standard FB friends interact like this.

Step One: Old friend/classmate/co-worker finds you and asks to be your friend
Step Two: You accept, mostly to see what the heck they've been up to, and there is possibly a brief "HI! What's up?! What have you been up to?" interaction
Step Three: Conversation dwindles down to almost nothing, maybe a few "liked" updates here and there
Step Four: You forget you are even "friends" with this person

This encompasses most of the typical Facebook interactions. Then, every once in awhile, along comes a breakthrough.

Enter the actual story....

Last week I get a message from one of those random FB friends that I went to high school with. Turns out he's coming to Chicago for the weekend and wants to know if I want to hang out at a local street festival with some of his friends. Since said local festival is in my neighborhood I figure why the heck not, it'd be fun to catch up and an excuse to get out of my routine.

Friday night turns into a bust, which is fine with me because I'm having a pretty good time at my local hang out playing darts and conversing with the regular cast of characters. Not thinking that Saturday will work, I spend the day hanging out and getting ready for fight night*. About 2 hours before I would of begun my trek up to the house of a friend for fights I get a text asking if I want to meet up for the local festival. Judging the time it looks like I can stop by the fest, say hello, and if it's totally weird and/or unfun I can ditch out and make it for fights, so I say sure, text me when you hit the city.

Side Note: Have you ever tried to find someone at a Windy City street festival? Someone you haven't seen in 12 years? It's not fun. Lucky for me I was spotted first and was able to stop the frantic, fruitless search of the crowd of eerily similar looking drunk 30 year-olds.

So we find each other. I meet his friends, all of whose names I promptly forget, and we wander around the street fest. Things are going well, I'm having fun, these people seem nice so I back out of fight plans and stick with the street fest. At some point about half the group decides they want to venture elsewhere, mainly to the fireworks downtown. As this plan holds absolutely no enjoyment for me I step back and let them figure it out. My old school mate and half the group decide to stay so I again decide to stick with the street fest since all in all, this has worked out well for me so far.

Fast forward through boring, tedious, and none of your business details and what ends up happening is I have a really, really great night. Brand new set of people, reconnecting with someone I was totally surprised to be hanging out with, and getting out of my usual routine for 48 hours. It was utterly fantastic. And it completely took me by surprise. And I think that is why 2 days later I'm still a bit smiley about the whole thing.


* Yes I am a fan of UFC fights. We can discuss my disturbing addiction to blood lust later if that's okay.