The party's over

Recently, I got an invitation in the mail. My friend Michele was having a Halloween party, and all my friends from college were going to be there.\nI was so excited! These days we only see each other at weddings and funerals, so an honest-to-goodness party would be fantastic.\nBack in the day, my friends and I were pretty wild. Once, I almost got run over by a drunk friend on a motorcycle, but he passed out and fell off before he could do much damage. \nThen there was the time I went to a party in another town, got drunk and danced on a pool table. When I woke up the next morning, I was still at the party, but everyone else -- and my pants -- were gone.\nMichele and I even called the campus police once to tell them to arrest the sun so we could keep drinking.\nTo sum it up, my friends and I have been kicked out of more bars in more towns than most people have ever been to, and I couldn't wait to see them all.\nAfter weeks of giddy waiting, the day of the party arrived. (I dressed as the pope, taking the name Lascivious I. My date, Jacob, looked adorable in his priest costume, more Thornbirds than Father Dowling.)\nBut the party wasn't what I'd expected.\nSure, my college friends were all there, but so were their husbands, wives and babies. Monogamy must be going around like the flu, I thought.\nThen there were Michele's colleagues, and friends of hers and her husband's -- friends they had together as a couple. As a family.\nTo top it off, Michele's parents showed up. They're two of the finest German Catholic people you'd ever care to meet, so of course I felt like a giant ass for masquerading as the Father of their faith. \nNobody was getting high, and when anybody needed a cigarette, he or she smoked outside. The few people who were actually drinking hid their beers whenever toddlers toddled past.\nNobody was making out in the corner. Nobody was naked. Nobody was dancing on the table. Nobody was setting anything on fire. The loudest thing at the party wasn't music or a motorcycle, but the frustrated baby screaming in his playpen.\nWhen I saw someone yawn, I looked at my watch: it was only 9 p.m.\nI ran to the bathroom, locked the door behind me and stared into the mirror.\n"What the hell has happened to us?" I asked my reflection. Everybody was married, everybody was sober. We were completely surrounded by babies, and even that didn't make anyone want to drink. What was the deal?\nThen it hit me: we had grown up. I'd always known it would happen, but I had no idea it would happen so soon.\nAmazingly, my reaction was more suited to Thanksgiving than Halloween. I wasn't scared at all, just immensely grateful to the Almighty that we'd survived bar fights, motorcycles and college. And lived to be so damned old.