Repeat, Repeat Performance

This past weekend, my husband Shawn and I went in on a couple of condos in South Padre Island with some of my Austin friends. We were pretty happy to be included, especially since we could not get our act together and figure out what we were doing until the night before everyone was leaving. This wouldn't have been that big of a deal except that it was 4th of July weekend. We got the room with the two single beds in the condo with the couple that had two kids. Call us Ward and June Cleaver.

Well, incredibly, it rained the ENTIRE weekend. This is not supposed to happen in Texas. I don't mean a few sprinkles here and there. I don't mean the bummer of an overcast sky. Oh no. I mean rain. Rain, rain, rain. So we drove four and a half hours to a beach in order to stay inside all weekend to eat, drink, eat, and drink some more. And some more. Good times. (You can ask my friend Michelle from New York, who I think tried to drunk dial me on that first night but got more than she bargained for - I'm sure I was probably twice as looped as she was, and she was the one who was eventually like, "Uh, yeah, I gotta go.").

So, take four couples and throw in some cabin fever, and what do you get? Let's call them "debates." There were a lot of doozy "debates" (thankfully none between Shawn and me), but my personal favorite involved the value of a story that one has already heard. Here's how it goes: the "day after," my friend Jenn and I kept bringing up a story from the night before. The story itself is not important. What is important is the fact that her boyfriend became very annoyed at having to hear it repeated several times. Fair enough - it wasn't the best story I've ever heard. But where he went too far was to proclaim that people should never repeat stories at all because (and I quote), "nobody cares."

Whoa! Excuse me?? I beg to differ. A good story is a good story. And each and every one of my friends has at least one of these gems. And you know what? Like a good movie or a book, I'm going to want to hear that story more than once. Heck, I just finished watching "Old School" for the umpteenth time, and it was even the crappy sanitized version on TBS. If I like a story, I'm going to get sucked in again, especially because, unlike the sanitized "Old School," there may be nuances in the second, third, twelfth time around that weren't in the first. New details = new laughs. And here's the other thing, perhaps the biggest thing of all: if there weren't any repeat stories, there wouldn't be any inside jokes.

And, where, my friends, is the fun in that???