Reverted to Children

aperto threw a Hawaii grill party at the tail end of summer—the kind of event the calendar insists is a good idea precisely because autumn has already arrived and everyone’s in denial about it. By the second hour, the usual professional composure had dissolved entirely. Adults who spend their days in sprint planning were shooting each other with water pistols. There was ping-pong. Someone had been pouring vodka into the lemonade when the lemonade wasn’t looking.

That’s what these things are actually for. Not networking, not team cohesion, not any of the HR language around it—just the occasional group permission to act like you’re twelve again. The senior developer was wearing a plastic lei and arguing about ping-pong scoring. The project manager had stopped pretending to pace herself. It was genuinely great. And apparently the Christmas party isn’t far off either.