Mid November and the sniffles and sagging eyes have had all of us sighing and coughing up huge flem balls of wishing it was spring rather than Thanksgiving.  It's the time of year for sweaters and baggy blue jeans and for both the ladies and the gents to feel okay about the 10 or 20 extra pounds they are carrying around because this is the time of year where heavy clothes hide those shameful bundles around the thighs and waists and necks and ankles.  And the ladies will order the 16 ounce lamb shanks drenched in rich red wine sauces and the guys will drink far too much beer and, for some reason, people will want to drink pumpkin martini's and milky dessert drinks on the rocks. 

I like to see that the ladies are going out together in packs a lot more often these days. I like to think that the ladies are putting their collective feet down and saying to their boyfriends or husbands, "Tonight is girls night out Mr. So-n-So,  so you can take the kids tonight Mr. So-n-So, or, you can go out with the boys tonight Mr. So-n-So, because I don't really care what your doing tonight Mr. because tonight I'm going out with the girls and there's nothing, absolutely nothing, you can do about it!"  Oh, I just love to see the ladies doing what they want, when they want, with whom they want. And when these ladies do their thing together, these packs of ladies just seem to walk with their collective heads held higher... as if they were once again back in high school walking the corridors together after lunch, so cool...  as if these ladies were once again school girls on Friday nights hitting the local Pack Dance at Sacred Heart and nothing, absolutely nothing, could be cooler! 

It's as if these ladies are once again flirting with the old feelings of sneaking a nip of schnapps behind the local Mini-Mart or kicking back with a couple Parliament Lights on the 50 yard line of the football field...  Oh, the good old days...  ...  ... Or maybe, maybe all this has to do with the fact that I just can't seem to get over this whole Facebook craze where people who I haven't seen in like 20 years are now saying hello, inviting me to be there friend, asking how I've been and... when I see their "recent" pictures, part of me just wants to scream and shout out, "What the hell happened to you!?  Good God," I want to say, "could the last 20 years have been any more rough on you!   You look awful," I want to say... but I don't.  I obviously comment about how great it is to hear from them and "Wow," I say, "You look great."

Where, oh where, does the time go, I ask?

Oh, who knows? I dunno.  Perhaps I'm seeing my old self and my old friends and our old ways in these recent girls of mid-November?  Perhaps these girls of today are simply reminding me of a time, not too long ago, where I would gawk at the pack of girls walking the corridor of my school after lunch with their collective head held high?  Maybe these girls of today are smoking their cigarettes outside in the cold November wind so that I'll remember the time when I did the same thing with my friends.  And boy oh boy, my friends and I would stand outside until our faces were blue while we waited for those girls of November to come walking our way. 

So I guess I'm just all caught up in seeing the past in everything I do presently.  Things could be worse I say!  And it's when I feel like this that I usually break out my old high school year book and take that trip down memory lane. I'll giggle a bit, maybe regret some things... but I really think I'd like to thank these girls of recent times who like to go out together and raise a little cane together because it brings me back to a nice warm spot in my belly... it brings me back to a time where the future was bright and anything was possible.  And oh yeah, it brings me back to a time when I was 25 pounds lighter and my hair was fuller and my.... You get the point. Happy Thanksgiving.    

By Jay Cole

Jay Cole is the owner of Riva restaurant in Scituate harbor and has an M.A. in creative writing. As Wink's Male Muse, he entertains us with stories about the women and men who enter his bar.