If you had told me I would be reading about friendship back in college I would have said, "You're crazy! All of this friendship stuff just happens naturally" Yet, this book caught my eye as the Stratejoy book selection for May. Here's the deal with the old wives tale that friendships are just supposed to happen naturally between people: life has to be conquered first. Meeting total strangers after college doesn't always feel so natural even if you're Barney from
How I Met Your Mother.
I have flashbacks to time spent with my school roommate from Mexico. I will always remember explaining the workings of suburban Massachusetts to someone looking for salsa dancing on a Wednesday night. "So that's not something we really have here often?" I've also had to say things like, "I guess America is totally broken! You're totally right?" and "You can't drink beer in my car!" That's often followed up with, "Even while it's moving!" and "Because I said so!" Nothing builds an awkward friendship like being labeled the uptight American who won't won't even park in handicap spaces.
Taking a class is supposed to be a great way to meet people except when it's being all what is THIS? My night school and advertising graduate classes are filled with irritable zombies who often threaten to deck our professor in the face. Advertising classes function on a social roller coaster where you want to be friends with the kid whose work everyone loves and if your stuff has just been ripped to shreds it's going to be one hell of a lonely evening. We're the kind of group that does the homework on the train on the way in and then wants to cry about it. From time to time I take a craft class like glassblowing and I know that a 5'2 gal wielding a ball of molten glass on a ten foot long pole looks kind of scary. "Be my friend but mind the fire ball." Technically, it's a deadly weapon. I miss the simple games we played in first grade like bean bag and parachute. Must we melt things and tear up drawings Mayan football style? What's with all the pyromania and the quest for world domination?
If we're going to a bar together I've probably read your Linkedin profile, seen your Pinterest, Tweeted with you, and we've probably Facebook stalked each other. Then there's the weird twist where if I like your blog I'll want to chill based upon your understanding of aesthetic sense and writerly voice. I know. So geeky. My last boyfriend was something of an anomaly with no Facebook page. A part of me still wonders what is he hiding?
When I examine what happens naturally I want to face palm myself. This rule does not do the job well. My childhood best friend is an ecologist and is voluntarily spending this summer in Kansas studying birds. She'd rather buy camping equipment then go to the beach. All of my high tech talk falls on uninterested ears and I find myself volunteering to go places for quality time like, "The Great Swamp," to fill out something called an "ecologist journal." I'm constantly asked not to make fun of bird watching and I feel like I've never been forgiven for going, "So that's a thing?" It's not that I'm ungrateful but who else in my life teaches me about seagulls and beetle varieties? I'm out of a practice having slept through a bunch of my high school environmental science classes. Next to her.
Birds are a personal fear of mine and only recently have I stopped crossing the streets to get away from pigeons. It's comically unnatural watching me try to connect with an ecologist. I feel like if I'm super encouraging about all the reptiles I'll finally be let off the hook for the one time in eighth grade when I bailed on her for my new boyfriend. Despising birds for me goes all the way back to Disney movies. I personally loved the episode of the
Big Bang Theory when Sheldon holds a bird for the first time. It was pretty darn moving. Sheldon Cooper meet Melanie.
Recently, I left an agency job and my former colleagues are always swooning all over each other over Facebook. I get 9000 reminders a day that company X is exactly like heaven due to all the free flapjacks, candy shared on birthdays, shared tastes in music, trips to the game, and taco parties. I find myself e-mailing, "Congratulations on your engagement!" to my old boss because I read about it on Twitter. I'm that girl, now? Due to the Internet I know when my former manager is at the gym two doors down from my home. And then there's how much they know about me.
It only gets weirder in the naturally unnatural department. My best friend from camp invited me to go to the movies with her and her father. Who does that? Apparently if I need more from a career then free pancakes and don't bring my Dad to the movies...I'm out numbered? I also can not decide if I want to let my high school best friend off the hook for leaving me at home to go get hair extensions when I was home with a broken ankle. It seems a bit high maintenance of me to expect a complete princess to put her hair care schedule on hold. I wonder what we have in common.
I try not to think about if my own decisions have ever messed up my supposed fate (yes, I know the point of fate and asking stupid questions). I met one of my college best friends in a revolving door where we yelled about being from New Jersey through the spinning glass. What if I was meant to walk through another door? Also, this college best friend is the kind of person who mopes all the time about her career and refuses to blast out cover letters, update a blog, intern anywhere, or even take a class. My regular, "Go get em!" speeches have me labeled insensitive. I've learned the hard way that I can't build and pay for someone's website to make them stop moping. Mopers gonna mope. Haters gonna hate.
I can barely make it through dinners where I have to hear about how someone who spent the day reading about reincarnation needs a job that pays $70,000 to make their student loan payments. I judge. Hit the X box on this window if it bothers you. I'm looking for a balance between people who live at work and people who think brewing tea is an ambitious day. Watching people suffer through the bumps in the twenty something road overwhelms me. There's nothing more soul sucking then working somewhere you've outgrown. I just have no idea what to say to comfort someone going through that so I usually come up with some totally inane answer like, "There's always teaching English in Korea! You'll love it!" When you suggest your friends move away to Asia they often get the wrong idea. Then there's my college best friend who once tried to cancel a trip because her house was being tented for termites. I confirmed real bugs to make sure I would not need to schedule a week of full on depression. That's when I laid down the one friendship rule I know for sure, "I refuse to lose to bugs. Pack your stuff."
