Last week, for the first time in some time I was invited to a keg party, and for the first time ever no part of me wanted to go to the keg party. I was invited by a 21 year old co-worker who was very excited to have the keg in his apartment, and understandably so. At that age there a few things more exciting than a keg of Coors Light and enough ice to keep it cold for 12 hours (not that its being warm would stop my younger self from drinking it for the rest of the week, if necessary). I tried to explain to him why going to a keg party didn't seem very exciting to me, but his response to every one of my arguments was, "Dude, it's a keg." "Yeah, I know, but I can get a keg whenever I want. It's sort of lost it's mystique." "Dude, it's a keg." "But I have enough money to buy as much beer as I want to drink, and it will taste a lot better than that lukewarm barrel." "Dude, it's a keg." I realized this conversation was going nowhere fast and my arguments needed to be more tactful. I asked him to recall when he was younger, when the prospect of eating ice cream for breakfast seemed like it would be the greatest thing in the world. When every kid had the thought that as soon as he was living on his own he would just eat ice cream for breakfast. But after eating ice cream for breakfast a couple times it really loses it's edge, and you feel shitty after, and eventually you realize that there's a reason nobody eats ice cream for breakfast regularly. The same can be said for kegs. There's a reason nobody just gets a keg for a party at their house, you just haven't learned it yet. "But, dude, it's a keg." Thinking back on my 21 year old self, I would have felt the same way. Then I told him about the last awesome part I threw, and I told him what the best part of it was: that through some sort of divine intervention each guest that came brought a different kind of cheese. "And I wasn't the only person that was excited," I explained. "As each person arrived and we had more and more cheese to eat we all got excited. And you can make fun of me now all you want to, but it's coming at you like a train. A train filled with cheese and boring." When did my life turn into this? When did I go from feeding gin to party guests through a turkey baster to getting excited about trying that other kind of cheese on a different cracker this time? I don't know. I'm going to have some cheese.