Tejas

Today is my birthday. I'm twenty-five years old today. Holy crap.

Gettin' old fast and only gettin' older faster. I got a lil thing goin' on this weekend. Lotta people are s'posed to be comin' out for that. Good friends. Old friends. New friends. Friends of friends. It's good. I'm lookin' forward to it. Nuthin' like bein surrounded by good friends on a good night for some drinkin' and eatin and dancin'.

I'm a terrible dancer. I dunno why I picked dancin' as sumthin' to go do.

Booze'll help it. So will the friends. Lot easier to do stupid things in front of people you know would be willin' to do the same for you. It's all in good fun and good friends won't judge you anyway.

Friends mean everything to me.

Without 'em we'd all go crazy. I never had too many but I've been lucky to have a few very good ones. People I can be open and honest with are few and far between. Just like good people.

But that's a good thing. The rarer a thing is the more precious it is. Friendship should be precious. A person should be happy to make new friends and sad when they lose old ones. Close friends should be few in number. You start gettin' thirty "best friends" you gotta wonder whose best they're really lookin' out for.

My best friend has been my best friend for more than a decade. He's like a brother to me. I'll look out for him the best I can. I know he'd do his best to do the same for me. (I get to be his best man in October. Helluva privelidge for me. He's got himself a good woman and I hope they're happy together for as many years as they have together.) I trust him. I can depend on him. It's nice to have a good reliable friend that'll be there through everything. Everyone in this world deserves one.

A best friend isn't sumthin' people have to earn its what everybody needs. It's as important as air. You need that friend to grow and understand people. You need friends to understand why the hell it is that we're here in the first place. Life ain't worth livin' when you ain't got friends. So there's really no reason why anybody should not want to be someone's friend.

The world's a lonely place without friends. I don't think anybody'd survive without at least one. I'm glad I have a few. Even with the few I have the world is still so damn loney sometimes.

I'm sure everybody feels that way sometimes. The popular kids never know who's really their friend. The soloists think no one wants to be their friend. Everybody's insecure about who likes 'em and who doesn't. But everybody just wants to be friends.

The world should just be a big place full of friends. Do you know how much aggrevation and frustration would be taken outta your life if everybody you had a conflict with was a friend? Granted there'd still be problems but just think for a moment, if everybody you got mad at was a friend, would you be so quick to cuss 'em out or write 'em off. I figure that's a no. You'd listen and understand where they're comin' from.

Love. Peace. Respect. That's not all there is but that's all there should be. That's all there is between friends. That's all there would be if we were all friends.

If you're my friend, know that you mean the world to me. If you're not my friend, know that I want you to be. If we've never met, I'm lookin' forward to it.

It's my birthday, I've had a few, forgive me if this is short. The point is I wish you all were here to help celebrate my birthday. You are all incredible people. That may sound like generic bull but I know it's true about every one of you. There's sumthin' about all of you that's deserving of a friend. If you don't have so many, just open up a lil and take a chance. Make a friend. It's always worth the risk.

My dinner's ready and I'm a lil drunk, I'm just bein' honest. So, goodnight to all of you. Hope you enjoyed it.