Making friends as an adult can be quite peculiar.
Growing up, in school, of course you're going to have friends. You're always around each other. People in school take making friends for granted. The fun and pleasant people think, "Well of course I'm going to make friends! I'm fantastic! That's all that matters!" The not-so-fun-and-pleasant people, the passive-aggressives, think, "I don't have to change how I act; people *have* to put up with me."
When you get out and about in the real world though, it's a different story. If you're not careful, you'll take your school mentality to work.That mentality is, "I'm around these people all the time; I must be friends with them." That mentality results in Cathy down the hall giving you updates on her cat and her food diary as you placidly smile and imagine hitting her with a tackhammer. Repeatedly. That mentality will drive you to drink before too long.
That is the glorious thing about being an adult though...eventually you figure out that you don't have to be friends with people that you don't legitimately want to be friends with and, once you learn that proximity does not equal affinity, let alone compatibility, you start looking for new friends.
Or you don't. There are a great many people that look around and say "I have enough friends. I have my school chums and people from work are fine. Besides, you live long enough, you'll meet plenty of people."
But let's just say that you are trying to make friends, even if the friends you already have are fantastic and all.
Trying to find people to make friends with is like trying to find people to date. You usually base the attempt around activities.
____________________________________________________________
These days, I'm in the car driving to and from or working 12-17 hours a day. I get to see my friends on the weekend, but during the week, I'm pretty much done. My lone outlet, at present, is bar trivia.
For people that don't know, bar trivia is not a bunch of lonely nerds with drinking problems. Well, I suppose it can be. Typically though, it's groups of clever people, clumps of friends, having a good time and trying to get their drinks and food covered. Some of these groups are dodos, but, if they're coming to bar trivia and didn't just happen to be there when the game started, they have at least one smart person. Over time, you start to learn the other teams.
My roommate and our buddy and I are a team. We are...Angela Lansbury's Vagina.
Yes; you read that right.
Angela
Lansbury's
Vagina
We play against "Cats", "Motards and Sex Gravy", "Anal ---- (Their name even appalls me)", "You Can't Fuck to a 'Rush' Song", and then a team or two who will make a name up based on current events with a sexual/morbid twist like "Little Sandusky Urban Achievers" or some such.
If you don't get it, I don't know what to tell you. It's a bunch of people, clever and not-so-clever, drinking at a bar. It's not town hall or church. It's bawdy and that's just how it is. The trivia host tells blue jokes and teases folks.
I love trivia because I'm clever and I like being vulgar. Plus, I enjoy beer. Also, not insignificantly, we're really good at it. Since the beginning of law school, I can confidently state that my friends and I are easily in the thousands of dollars in cash and bar credit. So, yeah, drinking and cracking jokes with my friends is not just our activity but it's also kinda a part-time job.
On Mondays, the game the roommate and I do is like a job. We win virtually every week so we have to go even when we don't necessarily want to. $50/week in free food and drinks add up. But we don't really talk to anybody there, other than the staff and the host.
Tuesdays are a different animal altogether. We don't win that one very often at all, about once every month or two (Still, Tuesdays are $100 cash). We're usually right in the mix to win, but there a lot of good teams. That means there are also a lot of other clever people who like to drink. The teams hoot and holler and taunt each other. We look forward to Tuesdays.
One of the teams, "...Rush Song", is a pack of medical students. They're our main competition. After months of teasing and cursing at each other (fine...me cursing at them) we're trying to be friends.
For the most part, other than the fact that we like trivia and drinking and we're (relatively) young, we don't have a whole lot in common. Lawyers typically come from the humanities and doctors typically come from the sciences. Sure, we might know what a bronchiole is and they may have heard of the Categorical Imperative, but... It's a good thing we know a bunch of gobbledygook or else we'd have nothing to say to each other.
Having something to say to each other is important, because, otherwise, why the hell are you talking to each other?
When you were a kid, your parents would make you hang out with some kid just because, dammit, you're both breathing. Yeah, it's your mom's friend's kid, but what the hell does that have to do with you?
It's called a play date.
You're in the kid's back yard while your moms are drinking wine on the porch; he looks at you; you both shrug your shoulders; then you slap him, say, "Tag! You're it!" and off you go.
As a grownup though, you feel like you need a reason to talk to strangers. It feels like you can't say "I just wanna be friends because." It's a fine line. If a stranger is friendly? Fine, he just wants to have a chat. If a stranger is TOO friendly? He's trying to get in your pants.
Rush Song is girls and guys. The girls are dating some of the guys. My roommate brings his girlfriend sometimes but our buddy and I are single.
Trying to make friends means selling yourself as someone the other person would like to be friends with. You have to be interested and interesting. This is *really* similar to dating.
Again, fine line. Friendly, but not too friendly. You want to talk about beer? Sure. You want to buy me a beer? Oh...I get it...
Of course that's an issue with the Rush girls. They're flirty and fun. Play flirting is fine, of course, but I try to be wary of perception. "Is that guy playing along or is he trying to steal my girlfriend?" Have I mentioned the Rush girls are smokeshows? Yeah. Totally are. Fun, smart, flirty smokeshows. (Dammit).
I've taken the path of making sure to engage with the guys as well. Of course, they don't know I'm not gay. "Maybe this guy is chatting my girlfriend up to get closer to me. Why the hell is he asking me random questions?" That goes double for the single guys on their team. "He seems a little *too* interested in what I'm saying about this local sports team."
And that doesn't even take into account the vice-versa: the girls could be legitimately flirting (keep telling yourself that, Ajax) and so could the guys (keep telling yourself that, Aja...wait. what?)
Concerns about genitals were not an issue on the playground. Other than vague but pervasive fears about cooties, obviously.
But, hey, sometimes you have to just go back to being a kid because it's not that complicated. "I wanna just because." Shrug. Slap. Play.
Technically, it's simple enough, but making friends as an adult can be quite peculiar.
Growing up, in school, of course you're going to have friends. You're always around each other. People in school take making friends for granted. The fun and pleasant people think, "Well of course I'm going to make friends! I'm fantastic! That's all that matters!" The not-so-fun-and-pleasant people, the passive-aggressives, think, "I don't have to change how I act; people *have* to put up with me."
When you get out and about in the real world though, it's a different story. If you're not careful, you'll take your school mentality to work.That mentality is, "I'm around these people all the time; I must be friends with them." That mentality results in Cathy down the hall giving you updates on her cat and her food diary as you placidly smile and imagine hitting her with a tackhammer. Repeatedly. That mentality will drive you to drink before too long.
That is the glorious thing about being an adult though...eventually you figure out that you don't have to be friends with people that you don't legitimately want to be friends with and, once you learn that proximity does not equal affinity, let alone compatibility, you start looking for new friends.
Or you don't. There are a great many people that look around and say "I have enough friends. I have my school chums and people from work are fine. Besides, you live long enough, you'll meet plenty of people."
But let's just say that you are trying to make friends, even if the friends you already have are fantastic and all.
Trying to find people to make friends with is like trying to find people to date. You usually base the attempt around activities.
____________________________________________________________
These days, I'm in the car driving to and from or working 12-17 hours a day. I get to see my friends on the weekend, but during the week, I'm pretty much done. My lone outlet, at present, is bar trivia.
For people that don't know, bar trivia is not a bunch of lonely nerds with drinking problems. Well, I suppose it can be. Typically though, it's groups of clever people, clumps of friends, having a good time and trying to get their drinks and food covered. Some of these groups are dodos, but, if they're coming to bar trivia and didn't just happen to be there when the game started, they have at least one smart person. Over time, you start to learn the other teams.
My roommate and our buddy and I are a team. We are...Angela Lansbury's Vagina.
Yes; you read that right.
Angela
Lansbury's
Vagina
We play against "Cats", "Motards and Sex Gravy", "Anal ---- (Their name even appalls me)", "You Can't Fuck to a 'Rush' Song", and then a team or two who will make a name up based on current events with a sexual/morbid twist like "Little Sandusky Urban Achievers" or some such.
If you don't get it, I don't know what to tell you. It's a bunch of people, clever and not-so-clever, drinking at a bar. It's not town hall or church. It's bawdy and that's just how it is. The trivia host tells blue jokes and teases folks.
I love trivia because I'm clever and I like being vulgar. Plus, I enjoy beer. Also, not insignificantly, we're really good at it. Since the beginning of law school, I can confidently state that my friends and I are easily in the thousands of dollars in cash and bar credit. So, yeah, drinking and cracking jokes with my friends is not just our activity but it's also kinda a part-time job.
On Mondays, the game the roommate and I do is like a job. We win virtually every week so we have to go even when we don't necessarily want to. $50/week in free food and drinks add up. But we don't really talk to anybody there, other than the staff and the host.
Tuesdays are a different animal altogether. We don't win that one very often at all, about once every month or two (Still, Tuesdays are $100 cash). We're usually right in the mix to win, but there a lot of good teams. That means there are also a lot of other clever people who like to drink. The teams hoot and holler and taunt each other. We look forward to Tuesdays.
One of the teams, "...Rush Song", is a pack of medical students. They're our main competition. After months of teasing and cursing at each other (fine...me cursing at them) we're trying to be friends.
For the most part, other than the fact that we like trivia and drinking and we're (relatively) young, we don't have a whole lot in common. Lawyers typically come from the humanities and doctors typically come from the sciences. Sure, we might know what a bronchiole is and they may have heard of the Categorical Imperative, but... It's a good thing we know a bunch of gobbledygook or else we'd have nothing to say to each other.
Having something to say to each other is important, because, otherwise, why the hell are you talking to each other?
When you were a kid, your parents would make you hang out with some kid just because, dammit, you're both breathing. Yeah, it's your mom's friend's kid, but what the hell does that have to do with you?
It's called a play date.
You're in the kid's back yard while your moms are drinking wine on the porch; he looks at you; you both shrug your shoulders; then you slap him, say, "Tag! You're it!" and off you go.
As a grownup though, you feel like you need a reason to talk to strangers. It feels like you can't say "I just wanna be friends because." It's a fine line. If a stranger is friendly? Fine, he just wants to have a chat. If a stranger is TOO friendly? He's trying to get in your pants.
Rush Song is girls and guys. The girls are dating some of the guys. My roommate brings his girlfriend sometimes but our buddy and I are single.
Trying to make friends means selling yourself as someone the other person would like to be friends with. You have to be interested and interesting. This is *really* similar to dating.
Again, fine line. Friendly, but not too friendly. You want to talk about beer? Sure. You want to buy me a beer? Oh...I get it...
Of course that's an issue with the Rush girls. They're flirty and fun. Play flirting is fine, of course, but I try to be wary of perception. "Is that guy playing along or is he trying to steal my girlfriend?" Have I mentioned the Rush girls are smokeshows? Yeah. Totally are. Fun, smart, flirty smokeshows. (Dammit).
I've taken the path of making sure to engage with the guys as well. Of course, they don't know I'm not gay. "Maybe this guy is chatting my girlfriend up to get closer to me. Why the hell is he asking me random questions?" That goes double for the single guys on their team. "He seems a little *too* interested in what I'm saying about this local sports team."
And that doesn't even take into account the vice-versa: the girls could be legitimately flirting (keep telling yourself that, Ajax) and so could the guys (keep telling yourself that, Aja...wait. what?)
Concerns about genitals were not an issue on the playground. Other than vague but pervasive fears about cooties, obviously.
But, hey, sometimes you have to just go back to being a kid because it's not that complicated. "I wanna just because." Shrug. Slap. Play.
Technically, it's simple enough, but making friends as an adult can be quite peculiar.
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