Where everybody knows your name

It was the weirdest thing.

Dave and I don't know more than a handful of people outside of where we work here in Oshkosh. We don't have huge groups of friends; most people just aren't that receptive to our nine-hour "CSI" marathons, I guess. Or, those nine-hour marathons aren't that conducive to meeting people. Whichever.

But we wanted to go out this past weekend because, well, after nine hours of anything on TV, you're bound to want to stretch your legs.

We and a friend went to a Mexican restaurant, had our margarita and our poorly pronounced dishes, laughed about stories we told and about, well, work, because that's what we do. Then we decided not to go home just yet, and instead we went to another bar.

When we walked in, there sat another guy we know; and then later, another group of guys we knew walked in. And they weren't just like "I think that guy's in my English class" kind of acquaintances, either. They were like "we've hung out before. We played Scene It and he was on the other team. And that guy, he crashed on our couch once."

"Did you have fun?" I asked Dave in the car on the way home.

"Yeah! We actually ... knew people." And we didn't laugh, because it wasn't really meant to be a joke. More of a "can you even believe it? And they didn't even pretend not to know me! That guy! He knew my name!"