Great guy-bonding movies all follow the same scenario.

Girl breaks up with guy. Guy’s buddies take him on an adventure to help him deal. Comedy ensues.

Think Swingers or Old School.

Like these movies, sometimes we need a reminder of why our friends are awesome and loyal, and girlfriends, at least most, come and go.

My girlfriend of about four months broke up with me last Saturday night. She was supposed to come over that night to watch the KU football game with me, but instead she called during the middle of the first quarter and after some small talk, she dropped an “I just don’t think I can do this right now.”

She then went on to tell me how I was perfect and she liked me, and I’m the guy she would want to take home to her parents, BUT she just had too much on her mind and she just couldn’t be in a relationship.

Yeah, it’s not you, it’s me.

My thoughts: Bullshit.

The sad thing is we went through all this two weeks before, when she sent me a text message at 2 a.m. on a Friday night, saying “I don’t think I can do this…”

The … would suggest that I’m leaving something out, but no, that’s how she ended her message, as though I’m supposed to understand …

Apparently, … is how she ends a thought. I usually end a thought with a singular period, but I also don’t break up with someone via text message.

I didn’t respond to this text until Tuesday night. I didn’t think it justified a response. And I was kind of preoccupied with dealing with a broken nose that required surgery that Monday. Yes, she dumped me the same week I broke my nose and my face looked like it was made out of clay.

But on Tuesday when I returned home from surgery, I finally responded to her text and asked her to come over, because I wanted to chat. I was having a High Fidelity moment. Haven’t you always wanted the real truth as to why someone broke up with you?

This was my chance. Too much time had passed to ask this question of girlfriends past without sounding weird (it was even kind of weird in the book and movie). But this was my chance to find out what the hell was wrong with me — or her.

So the next night she came over, and I told her some variation of this: In grownup world, you don’t break up over a text message. Then I asked what in the hell did I do that made you want to end this?

She came back at me with a bunch of excuses, and she said she had made a mistake and wanted to give it another try. I wasn’t expecting this, and for some reason (banging head against keyboard), I decided to give it another shot. My friends, as they should have, told me to proceed with caution. But hey, what’s a good script without some regret?

As it was before the open-ended text, everything was going fine until Saturday night, when I was watching the football game, and my phone rings*, and cue the second unexpected breakup.

*She was evolving. She called me this time.

I got the feeling that she wanted an understanding reply, and she wanted me to say, “Oh, well, I hope we can still be friends.” She actually did drop an, “I still want to be friends,” somewhere in the conversation.

I didn’t feel like being nice, and I was busy watching the football game, so I told her I was watching the game and didn’t have time for this.

Now, once I hung up, this would usually be the time where I would start moping and wondering what’s wrong with me. This would go on for a couple days before I’d finally stop being a wuss and move on. Most girls would probably start eating ice cream (or at least the movie version of girls would do this), and most guys in my situation would probably just drown their sorrows in alcohol alone.

I decided to be proactive and go with what they would do in the movies. This will be my response to breakups from here on out.

I called my buddies, who were already out in Kansas City at a bachelor party, and they said I should come to town to go out with them, and I did. Unfortunately, I had to miss most the game during the 90-minute drive, but I got to drown my sorrows in whiskey while surrounded by good friends.

Comedy, of course, ensued*.

*I’ll save what happened for my future book, or movie.

It was one of the best nights of my summer. By the end of the night, I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that I had been dumped that day, and that wasn’t even because of the alcohol.

The lesson: Never plan on watching a football game with just your girlfriend.

The other lesson, as it would be in the movies, is appreciate your friends. And when one of them gets dumped, take them out for a good time, filled with whiskey, ridiculousness and if you’re Double down Trent, Vegas baby!

I’ve always sworn, I’ll never be THAT parent.

You know, the one at the baseball game/school musical/piano recital who just can’t seem to keep their thoughts to themselves. The one who screams at their kid, either in support and in criticism. The one who, in their own mind, probably sounds completely normal while everyone around them is shooting each other “Who the hell is this guy?” looks.

I’ll never be that parent.

Years before I have a child of my own and plenty more before that child will have any sort of public performance, I’m at my nephew’s football game a few weeks ago and I’m suddenly THAT parent — err, uncle. It only lasts for a moment, an excited, almost unconscious moment, and then I’m back to being my calm-headed self.

A little context: My nephew turns nine tomorrow. This is a shocking statistic to me. It’s shocking because I remember being nine. Nine doesn’t seem all that long ago. There’s no…way…he’s already that old. To me he’s still an infant, a toddler, up and walking then up and running. He’s on his first t-ball team, he has his own room and he’s off to school. But nine? And playing tackle football? It’s almost too much to believe.

I’ve always felt a very close bond with my nephew. I had no younger siblings and when my sister unexpectedly told me she was expecting, there was no plan for a man in the life of her son. So there I was, a senior in high school with this newborn boy who felt something like a stranger, something like a little brother and eventually something like a nephew. We grew up together with one common connection: I was once a little boy and was still enough to remember what was awesome. Namely, sports.

I put a ball in his hand he threw it back. We’ve been doing approximately the same thing for the last eight or so years.

I taught him to put a spiral on a football and where the sweet spot is on a baseball bat. I was away at college while my dad taught him to ride a bike, but during my summer at home, we spent every minute available pitching and catching, hitting and running, ducking and tagging. The thing was, he didn’t care or even need to know that I’m no all-star athlete. I played football until it stopped being fun (seventh grade) and baseball until a few years past its entertainment expiration, unfortunately (high school). For him, it’s always been enough that I knew the rules, knew the fundamentals and was willing to play with him.

I think it’s reasonable to say my first experience watching him play full-contact, pads-hitting-pads football came with some nerves. I was just excited to see him suited up. Yellow pants, power blue jersey, white helmet that made his neck look like it was supporting a bowling ball. It may as well have been.

The first few plays were uneventful. He played running back and outside linebacker, almost exactly the same positions I played at his age. He was fast, always in position, but hesitant to actually make a play — just like I had been. It was a perfect situation, really. I didn’t need to see him excel; I just needed to see him there, playing. I needed to see all of those hours and days and years we’d spent together turned into something.

Suddenly, coming out of halftime, something became something big. He had the ball. He was toward the sideline, bobbling the ball for a moment then adjusting it on his hip. He was turning upfield and heading down the sideline. He was…gone. It happened in what truly was a split second. I was jumping up and down in place, screaming his name. Screaming “Yes!” and “Go!” and I’m sure a few other things I don’t remember. It was the most excited I’ve ever watching any sporting event, live or televised.

He was gone.

He was…almost gone.

One kid I hadn’t seen came from nowhere, dove and tripped him up just a few steps from his first touchdown. I’ve run it through my head 100 times since then. If that kid misses, my nephew scores. His team maybe wins. I can just imagine the beaming smile he would have worn, if only that kid misses. If only that kid misses, my nephew doesn’t lay on the ground after the play for what seems like forever. He doesn’t have his coaches help him to his feet while tears run down his face and he doesn’t spend the rest of the game on the sideline.

If that kid misses, my nephew doesn’t break his collarbone and isn’t in a sling on his 9th birthday.

I’m trying to see the positive in the way it all worked out, since the kid didn’t miss. See, I love that my nephew plays sports because I love the lessons that sports can teach. Team play, hard work, perseverance. What lesson does a 9-year-old learn from a broken collarbone five yards short of a touchdown? Toughness, I suppose — but he’s 9. He could have learned toughness from having the wind knocked out of him.

The best I can come up with at the moment is that I’m the one who learned from this experience. It wasn’t anything new to me, but a reinforcement of something I already thought I knew: I don’t want to be that parent. I don’t want to be that parent because that parent doesn’t leave the yelling at the game or the recital or the school play. That parent puts too much emphasis on sports or on piano or dance or whatever.

One minute, I saw all of the work and practice I had spent with my nephew turned into one of the most exciting moments of my life. The next, the basis of everything we’ve always had in common was hanging in the balance. I considered everything.

What if this causes lifelong pain?

What if he doesn’t want to play sports again?

Those first two are extreme, I know, but the thought of them broke my heart. I guess you just never want to see a loved one forced into anything. If he never wants to play football again, I can’t say I blame him. It might even relieve me a little. But as long as he has a choice, that’s enough for me.

Now, I just want one thing: I want that damn kid to miss the tackle so I can see a touchdown.

I have never, ever slept well. Not in my whole life.

You may hear legends of angelic babies who sleep through the night. I was not one of them.

At six months old, I decided to stop taking naps altogether, much to the chagrin of my poor mother. She devised segments of “quiet time” wherein I at least had to play quietly in my room, so she could have some time and I could at least learn to chill out.

As a kid, I had frequent insomnia. I remember being seven and eight and awake for two hours after bedtime. The walls of my basement bedroom were decorated with dollhouse wallpaper, which I used as backdrops for made-up stories. The night-light cast shadows that were perfect for shadow puppet performances. And my stuffed animals were frequent characters in complicated plots.

As a teenager, I became obsessed with the problems of the world and tossed and turned while I thought of ways to solve them. Sometimes I came up with great solutions, but more often than not I just couldn’t sleep.

And now, as I’m soon to enter the last year of my twenties, I still can’t sleep. Tonight, ironically, REM cycles evade me because I’m preoccupied with writing this piece. However, my insomnia is seldom productive in the get-relevant-work-accomplished sort of way. It’s more of a stare-at-the-ceiling thing. It can be quite maddening.

My mom assures me this problem will not go away. She and my grandma are both uncontrollable night owls, so possibly it’s hereditary. Grandma is famous for staying up until 3 a.m. Christmas Eve to put finishing touches on gift wrapped packages. At eighty, she still doesn’t sleep.

So that’s what I have to look forward to. A lifetime of insomnia. Maybe it’s a sort of super power. Or maybe it’s just annoying. Maybe it’s part of what makes me a decent writer, or a deep thinker, or an introvert. Like Ione Sky’s character in Dream for an Insomniac, I’m trying to find inspiration in the sleepless hours I frequently encounter after dark.

I could go on, but then I really would never sleep.