When Alphas Collide

There is nothing like honoring tradition. Especially when that tradition involves hanging with two of your best friends and tearing up whatever town in which you happen to land. To many folks the three of us are known as those crazy guys who made a boring night awesome - we call ourselves GND - just the Guys Next Door.

The three of us come from completely different cultures, yet we are very much alike. Weezy is from a liberal upper middle class background in the Northeast, T-Nuts is from a conservative middle class Nigerian background, and I am from an ultra conservative lower middle class Midwestern culture. Each of us - in our own way - is funny, charming, interesting, attractive and a great time to be around. Each of us are also often arrogant, stubborn, foolhardy, short-tempered, condescending, jealous, self-centered, and can be a preening primadonna. Each of us is also fiercely independent, and we all tend to attract (and be attracted to) sycophantic women. So for most of the year my friends and I are used to getting our way, enjoy not taking crap from anyone, and in our off time we relax while hot women tell us how cool we are. Then for a week I get to hear my friends tell me I am full of absolute shit, and I tell them the same. It is a hard thing to deal with that transition, and we end up with a recipe for a lot of fun and a crapload of drama. This might be why George Clooney and Christian Bale don't hang out.

If you are watching the three of us at a restaurant, in the span of five minutes you will hear uproarious laughter and frenzied arguments at least three times each. In fact, there are a few general themes for every time we get together.

• Hilariously wild stories from college retold, and sometimes relived.
• Horribly embarrassing stories from college retold to each other, and sometimes to girls who were interested in one of us before they heard the story.
• Pissing matches over nothing, both figurative and literal, commence at least once a day.
• Argument and offense is forgotten in the next few minutes.
• Girls will join our group, drawn to our natural energy. About half of them then be repelled by our caustic behaviour. No comment on the other half.
• Even though we all went to a top 10 university, at one point we will talk down to each other like children.
• At least one of us will end up in the hospital and/or deathly ill before the trip is over.

Hanging out with these guys really brings the "iron sharpening iron" line to life. Even though we are at each others throats, we still have a great time together and all the steam that has built up from work, life, and love is gloriously released on a GND outing.

Thankfully, I managed to actually stay healthy this year.