So this morning I find myself sitting and reflecting on a recent Woine Toime evening, something that’s been happening reasonably regularly at my place on a Friday night for years, although lately less so thanks to the introduction of karaoke, but still a thing that we do. The people who come have changed with time, new ones introduced and old ones moving on, but with a core group that come to laugh and gossip and support.
I’ll provide the snacks, you bring your own drinks and we’ll sit and see where the conversations take us. Sometimes the people connect incredibly well and it’s like they’ve all know each other for years, other times it can be more awkward and harder for the conversation to flow. Either way I love it. It’s a therapy of sorts and it feels good to do.
The drinking is generally light and social, but we’ve had some big nights of singing and dancing (including costume changes) with the appropriate level of hangover the next day for one or two of us. More often than not it’s a regular Friday night with a bit of fun thrown in, and the weekend proceeds as planned. Very occasionally things turn out vastly differently to expectations and the only thing you can say is WTF, what the hell was that!
It’s been a while since Woine Toime happened, so I threw out an invitation to a whole bunch of friends. Thanks to short notice, only a handful were able to come, but it was lovely sitting and chatting and introducing new friends to old. I’m not entirely sure at what point things turned weird, probably when the Fireball Whiskey came out, and my sister went home – but the evening did not go the way it usually does.
There were some quite heated conversations about current affairs and politics, human rights and discrimination. There were conversations about the music playing and remembering the originals as we were listening to the remakes, and there was a lot of drinking! So much so that I had a need for one of the guest beds, a plunger and a whole lot of panadol – you know who you are! “ Got to be honest. Not feeling great. It’s been a very long time since I have had this kind of self inflicted pain.” Was the feedback a couple of hours into the morning.
The weirdest thing for me tho was a friend changing the rules of the game. We’ve been friends for a long time without there ever being a hint of anything romantic, I though for either of us. Apparently I had that wrong and there were very strong feelings on his side. I did not see it coming and felt quite awkward when approached about it. It was unwelcome and intrusive and Im not sure how to process it. I don’t know what happens now. It put a very different twist into the evening, and while we have agreed to pretend it never happened, I know things can’t ever be as they were!
At this stage I’m not sure when the next Woine Toime will be, I need to process this one… and as my kids say, I seem to be more social than they are at the moment! For now, karaoke is back on and certainly for the next few Fridays, that’s where you’ll find me x