Song of the Day: This Afternoon

​OKay, so the next song on my list is Nickelback's "This Afternoon." Yes, Nickelback. Get over it.

Like the video for Dark Necessities, this song is about being with friends. For me, its significance lies in in a moment. Through the nineties, much of my liesure time was spent either table-top gaming ot LARPing. My friends and I would spend the entire weekend gaming, starting Friday night and going on through until Sunday afternoon wit little or no sleep. We saved worlds and did epic shit, either around a gaming table or camping out in the woods and smacking each other in the dark with padded PVC pipes.

But that bond went outside of games. We helped each other move. Some of us became roommates. We listened to each other's problems, gave bad advice, partied together, celebrated holidays and so on.

Of course, time and society being what it is, we eventually grew up and our paths went in different directions. In 2004 or '05, I ran a game for a new generation of players, and managed to get a few of the original LAPIS players together to help me do it. Since we played in the hot months of summer, afternoons were usually when we took a break fora few hours. And, on this Saturday afternoon, the core of the group ended up sitting around an old picnic table, talking and laughing like we used to. They say you don't know what happiness is until you lose it, but I think that some times, you get those rare moments when you see it for what it is, and can live in that moment knowing that this, right here is one of the times when you were happy. And then, that one song comes on the radio...and you know your tribe is always there.