This past weekend, I went to Colorado to attend the wedding of an old college roommate, named Charlie. Charlie was my first friend that I made as a freshman in college and he quickly became my favorite drinking buddy for the remainder of our college careers. Charlie was also the member of a certain Animal House fraternity, so I soon became a regular (groupie) at his fraternity house, and was a permanent fixture at all of their parties. So when I showed up in Breckenridge, Colorado, this past weekend for wedding festivities, I was quickly greeted by many "old" fraternity boys, most of whom I hadn't seen since I graduated from school in 1998.

Now mind you, these were the boys that taught me how to do a keg stand, taught me how to chug from a beer bong, and taught me how to drink, well, like a good ol' frat boy. Needless to say, I partied hard with these boys, during my college years, so it was great seeing them again after all this time.

So soon after the wedding ceremony was over, we all made our way to the reception and headed straight for the, ahem, open bar so that we could party like it was 1994-1998. But the funny part was that instead of ordering the reminiscent naty-ice, keystone-light, or cheap shot of tequila, we had all graduated to more "grown up" drinks like martinis, merlot, and scotch. Not only that, but our conversations had matured as well. Instead of talking about getting tickets to the next Beastie Boys concert, or last night's kegger, we were talking about mortgages, 401K's, and life insurance policies.

At what point did we all grow up???

The guy with whom I once stayed up all night with, watching Wizard of Oz while listening to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon," was now showing me pictures of his wife and kids. And the guy who once drank so much that he passed out in the same twin bed as his fraternity brother was talking to me about real estate values and the stock market. And my first friend from college, the man of honor, Charlie, who was once dubbed the "King Cobra" of his fraternity was now getting married, to a sweet and smart girl. (I won't go into details about what "King Cobra" means, but let's just say that Charlie was well liked by many, many, many, girls.)

But as the night went on, and more drinks were drank, our "old" ways came out in full force. We ate, we danced, we drank more, we were once again college kids. And maybe we didn't feel so much like college kids the next morning, when we woke up with our grown up hangovers, but at least we remembered that getting older doesn't have to age us. But it instead provides us with "old" friends. And growing old with "old" friends is the best way to grow at all.