Friends

I can count on one hand how many times I've joined a group of friends to watch a tv program. The only one that sticks out in my head at the moment is the coming out episode of Ellen. Tonight will be the next moment as some of our usual Thursday drinking crew gather at our house to watch all the Friends finale hoopla.

Admittedly, I didn't start watching the series until Matt and I started dating. But in a funny twist of fate, the series premiered on the birthday of a guy I had just met who was beginning to become a great friend. It was my senior year of high school and I was more interested in watching My So-Called-Life. In the early years, all the hype about the show seemed a bit overdone to me. I knew groups of music students at Baldwin-Wallace that would tape each episode to watch on Thursdays after they got out of orchestra rehearsal. It wasn't until I started watching the show weekly sometime in late 1999, early 2000 that I began to understand.

And since I am a sentimental bastard, I'll probably be weeping into a tissue for chunks of the final episode tonight. It was a good run all in all.