Bowling? Why the hell are we going bowling?" It was more of a statement than a question. Though I wasn't necessarily against the idea, I still felt like heckling my friend a bit. "Besides you suck at bowling."

"Shut up bowling's cool." Brian's answer was automatic. "And the only one who sucks is your mom."

We both laughed, but not at the joke--comments like these have become almost instinctive over the years. Mainly, we were just happy to be reliving the good ole' days of our high school friendship. Happy we could mock each other without being offensive. Happy we could still make stupid jokes without feeling stupid ourselves.

For me, summer vacation meant the opportunity to spend quality time with some of my closest friends from back home, many of whom I hadn't seen since last September. But what I was looking forward to the most was our casual, somewhat childish attitudes towards each other. Contrary to life at Harvard, back home we all felt comfortable making stupid conversation and resorting to humor of the lowest common denominator. And, after spending a year in an environment of such intellectualism and personal growth, it would be a nice change of pace simply to regress.

But while I was eager to hang out with "the gang," I was also a bit apprehensive. What if they've all changed? What if we don't click anymore? What if we've all matured to the point where we just can't go back? I was trying to sort out two different worlds--and one was in danger of being wiped out by the other.

I got into Brian's car and we pulled out of the driveway. "So.... Bowling."

"Yeah."

"Nothing better to do?"

"It's that or mini-golf."

"Tough call."

So as I rode shotgun with Brian en route to the bowling alley, I felt slightly relieved. Things didn't seem as though they'd changed at all. We reached our destination and parked the car. The idea was to meet our two other friends inside and bowl until management kicked us out. Admittedly, these were pretty lame plans, especially for a Friday night. But for those of us living in small-town suburbia, this is as exciting as things get.

"Fools are late," muttered Brian as we entered the building. "Probably got lost."

"Probably ran out of gas," I offered, alluding to a previous incident when our friends had had to push their six miles uphill to a gas station-- only to find that they had no money.

"Dumb-asses." We were starting to sound like Beavis and Butthead.

Chuckling, I walked up to the register and paid for my bowling shoes. It was a full house that night, but we manage to secure a lane at the far end of the building. A few minutes later, our other friends finally arrived.

"O-Ree-shard Lee!" They greeted me with my customary stupid nickname. I'm not quite sure how I acquired that particular one, but, then again, we all had our own stupid nicknames of unknown origins. One more indication that things hadn't changed.

A few more minutes of mindless banter, and we eventually got around to bowling. But the childishness continued. We were loud and obnoxious. We offered condescending advice when someone screwed up and gave grudging respect when someone bowled well. We made stupid jokes and laughed at everything and anything.

"Nice bowl. You almost got one that time."

"Shut up.... The ball was defective."

"Hey, I'll give you five bucks if you stick your hand down that ball return thing."

To any outsider, we probably resembled a bunch of teenage misfits--delinquents who never quite matured. And maybe we were. Maybe we should just grow up and act our age. Maybe it is futile to try and go back to something that's long past.

But the reality was that all of us had grown up. And we knew it. Amidst all the camaraderie and laughter, there was a shared realization that, indeed, things could not always stay the same. We knew that as we grew older, opportunities to go bowling together would become much scarcer. And no matter how hard we tried to conceal it, we all knew, deep down, that we were new people with new friends and new lives.

In that sense, our interaction that night wasn't an attempt really to regress towards adolescence. Nor was it an attempt to fight the inevitable. Rather, it was our way of telling each other that we still held those "good ole' days" close to our hearts. In our own unique way, we were paying tribute to a friendship by re-enacting its most memorable aspect.

Eventually, management did kick us out. Reluctantly, we gathered our belongings and headed out the door. I started to wonder if, thirty years from now, the four of us could still get together and play out the same script all over again.

"Shotgun."

"Hey, I already called it."

"I didn't hear you."

"Let's fight for it."

I wouldn't be surprised.

Richard S. Lee '01 is a social studies concentrator living in Pforzheimer House. This summer he is interning with the New York Civil Liberties Union and working on his bowling form. He tries not mix the two.