The 11th Wheel: The Last Days of Being a One Man Wolfpack

I'm 26.

Let that settle in for a second before you come to realize that I should've had a quarter-life crisis by now. Well I have... it involved a bottle of Jack and me in my underware swearing at God in a hail storm on the Appalachian Trail. Needless to say that said crisis makes you realize, your twenties are damn near over and your nowhere near where you want to be in life. Sure you have some time to screw around or buckle down but the majority of your family and friends look at you like you need to un-fuck your life.

In the last year virtually all of my best friends have proposed, gotten married, or have impregnated their better halves. It is awesome, don't get me wrong. I have feelings of utmost joy for them, but I also know, that our days of crazy antics are limited (i.e. no more hopping on moving trains). All that to say, I have officially become that guy. So as I'm preparing to be the cast type man-boy, I know that going forth is an even narrower road. Weddings, and saturday night dinners, even bar outings will be conversations riddled with talks of mortgages, babies, Modern Family episodes and domestication. That word "domesticated" makes me want to rip off my shirt and run into the woods with a trout in my mouth and wear nothing but some Tarzan-esque banana hammock. YOU can't tame this burly beast!

But sooner or later I know that I'll be lured into the life of a family patriarch, a mini-van man. I get the itch from time to time, but lasting commitment to me currently is deciding which Captain Crunch flavor I want in my cereal bowl for the nest week. It's interesting how we evolve, our relationships, our choices, our lifestyles. Even now, when in the midst of good friends and family who have started their next season of life, I feel that I'm still not quite finished in this phase. They wonder and ask questions, but I kind of smile. So as I prepare to attend 800 weddings in the next year and embark on the new endeavors near the end of this season, I try to enjoy watching my friends pave the way. Their pavement, leads to my cruising.