Mondays come with lessons.

On the Monday that my friend hosts a game night, I flip through the adulting etiquette handbook, where it says only host a game night on Monday if Tuesday will be a holiday. There, it also adds “except the host is your friend, then they would be worth the inconvenience.”

Sitting there, our backs sagged with the weight of the day’s work, I learn through the cheerful banter that fills the air, that there is a joy to being inconvenienced.

What else did this Monday teach me?

That you do not celebrate a decade-long friendship without your friend knowing how you dance.

When teams are shared for a game of charades, my heart breaks. My preferred team mate becomes my opponent and I admittedly worry that my team mates and I cannot replicate the chemistry that requires us to win the game.

When it is my turn to demonstrate a dance to my new team mates, new friends connected by the sheer zeal to win the game, none of them comes close to knowing what I am doing and my frustration sits on my brow.

“Shaku-Shaku” someone from the other team calls out. It is my friend, who has experienced my many failures in an attempt to learn a trendy dance. Everyone was sure that my actions shared no similarities to the viral dance of 2017, and even my friend claimed he had ‘no idea’ how he made the lucky guess that earned my team the points. That reflex of knowing the movement of my body however, could have only been known by someone who has lived the many ways I have failed at learning a thing. It wasn’t a lucky guess, it was a conviction of friendship.

On that Monday, I also learnt that all friends know the same things, but the sources may be different.

When a phone rings behind me, I turn and find that it is a mutual friend calling. I am present in that room because I have been added to a group chat where friends keep each other updated. This mutual friend whose caller ID photo smiles on the screen behind me is not in the group. I answer the call.

They recognise my voice instantly and say only these things “I am on my way.”

I look at the phone transmitting its heat into the palm of my hand and sense a shared purpose, to transmit information. Across the room I call out to the owner of the phone call I received and I give them the message, of expectation, of knowing.

My friend arrives and my query of how they learnt about the games night loses importance.

In the end from the look of all the faces that make it to the games night, I learn on Monday that friends are looking for ways to be inconvenienced, so that they can show up and tell everyone that they know how you dance.