...till you walk a mile in his...friends?

I've always given a lot of thought to "mixing friends". And by that I mean, for instance, having a party and inviting friends from work AND friends from college. They probably don't know each other. And while you may think you act exactly the same around everyone, you're wrong. It may be as subtle as the types of jokes that you can tell one group and not the other...or your vernacular in general. But you definitely act differently. So there's always that worry that the friends won't mix. You'll get them all in a room and suddenly you feel like you're at a 6th grade dance. Each group is on either side of the room...and aside from random sidelong glances, there is no contact between the two factions.

Ok, that's not the point of my blog. Let's take a different perspective. Instead of being the host, what if you were a guest? You've been given a great gift. The host has handed you a window into his other life. You get to see what he's like when he's not at work (or school, or the Strip Club).

For me, this happened over the weekend. I attended a grand event. A rite of passage. A Bachelor party. Of course, for safety sake, all names and places have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent. Though my point isn't the events so much as the people involved.

Anyway, I drove to an unnamed location with...um...Charles Barkley. Michael Jordan was getting married. No...I don't like that set up. We'll call him Assman McGrabber (hey, he chose the name). Now, Barkley and I had known McGrabber for many years....but he had spent the past 7 or 8 years playing high school football at West Caanan High in Texas. So, not being football players, we were worried that we might not fit in with all of McGrabbers' (his friends call him Mox) friends...

....but we did.

In fact, it took less than 5 minutes before we were making fun of Billy-Bob (now I bet you're wondering which one is Billy-Bob) right along with the rest of them. We all had the same taste in movies, music, and books. You could tell right away that Mox had surrounded himself with some intelligent and funny people. We had a blast through the weekend. And I can truthfully say that more than one dollar was placed in a girl's bra (if everyone calls her a stripper then does that make it true?).

Now, I'm just rambling here...but think about the essence of my message. The next time you see someone's friend from another place in his life, look at what kind of person that friend is. You can tell a lot about someone by the people he surrounds himself with.