I once successfully evaded the police while carrying an apocalyptically drunk friend on my shoulders. We ducked into an alley and didn't get caught, despite said friend loudly ranting about UK agriculture law.
I got Brian May (of Queen fame's) autograph while gushing blood from a nasty mosh pit related injury to my eye. I rambled something concussed about music and you could actually see the mixture of concern and disinterest in his handwriting.
As a house party I hosted was winding down I noticed a flashing yellow light coming through the curtains. Several friends of mine had raided a nearby construction/roadworks site and stolen every kind of stop sign, traffic cone, barricade etc and filled my front garden with them. The flashing lights came from the icing on the cake - a 12 foot tall set of battery operated traffic lights, cycling through red, amber, green. Thousands of pounds of equipment illuminating the whole street with the crime they'd just committed.
At another house party we stole an industrial roll of cling film from work, threaded a baseball bat through it and cling filmed the following; our friend Sarah to the staircase, our friend Tom inside his own car while he slept (he had to roll down a window and use his keys to cut his way out in the morning, it took him about an hour and a half) and both ends of a street using trees on either side of the road.
At that same house party the miserable shit I lived next door to kept phoning the police to complain and spying on people in our garden from his back window, so we faked an accidental death, complete with a hasty mannequin burial to give him a genuine reason to call the police.
I've been to a bunch of checklist places and done tourist bollocks, I've been blackout drunk, I've tripped my balls off and I've been as high as it's possible for me to get. I've been chased by the police, private security, thugs, a ticket tout, a German pimp, chavs and junkies, been attacked and fought back and I've walked home with the taste of blood in my mouth. I've made poor decisions because of lowered inhibitions and nightclub lighting and I'm sure I've BEEN the poor decision on more than one occasion. I've been disappointment with women I yearned for and fell deeply in love with ones I never expected I would. I did all of this while going to college, working full time and maintaining good friendships and relationships.
That part of my life was done by my mid twenties. It was reckless, experimental, insane at times and a whole lot of fun, but to have carried on chasing that would've been pretty pathetic going into my late twenties, thirties. I'm in my mid thirties and a parent now, and a fucking good one I have to say, in part because I got all of that shit out of my system while my body was capable of keeping up with it. I'm raising a human life and using the experiences I've had in my 35 years to shape it as best I can. That may seem boring to you, but by any scale it's more important and meaningful than eating at a well reviewed restaurant. Hopefully that's a value I can teach to my boy so that he doesn't end up a braggart and eternal bore who sees other people as being there for his entertainment.
That's the part you don't get, your friends who've become parents will occasionally wish they could have a night away, some rest perhaps, but by and large they knew what they were getting into and decided the sleepless nights and shitty nappies would be worth it. They'll have a romanticised notion of doing the things you do, but here's the thing: they're not wishing they could do it with you. They see your social media updates and they skip right past them, because they've decided what they're doing is more important and more rewarding than hanging out with you.
