During the course of one amazing run of watching television with my wife, something terrible happened -- I identified with a character on a sitcom. Really, I suppose that this isn't all that surprising (happens a lot) because I actually spend a lot of time (need a life) wishing that my casual conversations with friends were written by a (talented) screenwriter (I am lame).

My personal desire for my own writing staff is, however, another story.

I would much prefer to spend the next 700 words contemplating why on earth I miss "hanging out." It's obviously something that cool twenty-somethings on television do well into their thirties, yet something I am decidedly NOT doing I am, as point of fact, sitting here at my computer on a Friday night while my wife is at her book club.

And no, going to book club is not "hanging out." Women lose the ability to hang out after they graduate from high school, whereas for a guy, graduation is merely a gateway into higher levels of hanging out. Guys can (and should!) acceptably hang out well into their forties. It is one of the few forms of true male empowerment that remain at our disposal. Around middle age, it doesn't go away so much as mutate into joining a golf or bowling league, thus consigning the last vestiges of killing time to sitting around watching one's kids hang out, thinking they find you cool and relevant. But I see the writing on the wall, and that's why I'm here now, wondering why the hell it's so hard to get a good "hang out" going on anymore.

In reality, it may not be a lack of all-guy social time that I'm missing, so much as a fear that my life won't be as interesting as a result of it. I've got to face the facts of my past here -- I did have my own era of sitcom life. It was from June of 2000 to February 1, 2003, and it took place in a three-bedroom townhouse in Gahanna, Ohio.

I was the only constant resident of 514 during this entire period -- for a majority of the time, my good friend Dennis was principal number two, and during that period, the triangle was completed by our fraternity brother Dana (who was a transitional roommate for several months before being replaced by...), Susan (who stayed for about a year before leaving to shack up with her then-fiancé and was soon replaced by...), and Mike (another fraternity brother and a really good friend of Dennis and mine). It was during this time that 514 had a certain undeniable gravitas, a word mutually interchangeable with "really dirty bathrooms."

The combination -- while not without its problems -- made for excellent hang out conditions. The Dustin-Dennis-Mike era was the time when "shirtless internet rules" came into play. (That is, if you were on the 'net via one of the house's many computers, you had to be topless. Dennis and I tried to institute this with Susan, but it didn't really catch on until Mike replaced her.) The D-D-M period saw many hours of us playing video games together and discussing why none of us ever called to report the large hole in our living room ceiling that appeared after Dennis slipped in the shower, ripped the soap dish off the wall, and consequently exposed said ceiling to unplanned amounts of moisture. There were frequent ritualistic trips to BW3 to watch Monday Night Football, occasional games of tennis under the night lights of the neighboring high school courts, and nearly-disastrous indoor games like "Down the Stairs Putting Challenge," "Kitchen Sack Chipping Challenge," and "Down the Hallway Whiffle Ball Batting Practice," which resulted in a (thankfully repairable) downing of the Venetian blinds on the patio door. Sadly, that was never one of the moments caught on videotape.

Through the course of this setting, other characters would come and go -- Dennis's girlfriend (now wife) Amanda was a frequent guest; Mike's girlfriend (now wife) Anika would occasionally visit from out of town; and my... uh... well -- there were several people in this period of my life but none of them are now my wife -- would drift in an out of the picture from time to time. We also were always a frequent stop for other college friends. All these people were able to stir the pot, give us fodder for discussion, and possibly even provide us with real-world contrast to prevent our lives from becoming even more like an episode of Friends.

But it was thinking about that time that made me realize that I had too many stories to tell from that era -- far too many that would fit into this piece. The simple act of hanging out became fodder for so many other moments. And that's what I miss the most about easy-access to that kind of situation. Although my bathroom is clean, my ceilings are intact, and I wouldn't trade my wife or my love for her for anything else -- they don't make for nearly as entertaining an essay as writing about three guys who once spent an entire night shirtless, drinking cheap beer, listening to Tom Waits records, and just generally hanging out.