My Life As a Sitcom

I've been back in Roanoke for a few weeks now and I've found myself hanging out with some of the same people on a pretty repetitive basis. This is a great thing for me. Because it means that I'm not sitting alone in my apartment watching TV or reading a book or stalking people on Facebook.

I've been going to friends' homes for meals. I've been going out to eat and to see movies and to baseball games. Okay, there was just the one baseball game, but there's another trip to the ball park coming in the near future.

And today, I went and had lunch with a group of friends, old and new, and then spontaneously went with a couple of them to see a movie. Again, this is great for me and is a welcome change in my life. After all, for the last couple of years, I haven't had a whole lot of options when it came to having a social life. I worked all the time, and when I wasn't working, I was too exhausted to really do anything.

But now that I have a circle of friends, I'm starting to think we need a hang out spot. I know, I know... I watch too much TV. But that's the thing, if I'm gonna fall into some kind of sitcom character stereotype, I kind of want a stereotypical hang out to be stereotypical in.

Friends had Central Perk. How I Met Your Mother has MacLaren's. And those kids from That 70's Show had Topher Grace's basement... right? I don't know... I didn't really watch that one. But they all had their place. I want a place.

I'm sure that's a lot to ask. There are a lot of places that people can go to hang out in Roanoke. I could be wrong about that. I haven't been back here long enough to really find out if that's true. But while that's appealing, I always kind of questioned those sitcom characters. Didn't the guys on Cheers ever do anything other than hang out in that bar? Does the study group from Community have a life outside of going to class all the time? Do I and my sitcom friends want to be pegged down as that group that always sits on those couches at the coffee shop?

And this begs the question: do my friends mind that I just referred to them as sitcom friends? I think I'm probably the only one who kind of wants life to turn out like a movie or TV show. Is that the writer in me, itching for a happy ending?