Bryan’s Ramblings

I remember my best friend in Kindergarten: Earl. He and I hung out every day at school and did whatever we did at recess. I don’t remember Earl from 1st grade on, though. I think he must have moved away.

As I get older, I realize what role friends play in different stages of life. What I look for in a friend now is not the same as what I looked for four years ago, ten years ago, or of course twenty years ago. In Kindergarten, I just needed someone to hang out with at recess and lunch. Actually, this was largely true through fourth grade. Then of course you need after-school buddies since your neighbors can no longer occupy your need at home. Then in middle school and more so in high school, you find “closer” friends who you think mean something deep to you and you can talk on the phone and analyze relationships and be generally ridiculous (or maybe that was just me). Maybe you stay loosely in touch with a handful of people from this crowd for the next ten to twenty years, but probably not.

Of course college is a whole new ball game. You are looking for support systems more than anything, but also drinking buddies and study buddies and maybe fuck buddies (or girlfriends if you’re like me…what was I thinking?) The bottom line is, these bonds, more than any before them, should be the ones that last. Invariably, though, they can’t because things like distance, time, and jobs get in the way. Oh sure, you can see them and hang out occasionally and talk online and e-mail and chat on cell phones. However, it can never be the same as it was in the dorms or in the college house. Everybody is too different and too far away and too “grown up”.

Right around this time, a new phenomenon comes into play: work friends. Doesn’t that just sound ugly? At first, it does. The place you’d never go if you had an endless supply of money is the last place you want to make friends. The problem is, when you spend about half of your week in one place, hopefully you can make some friends there or you will really hate your life. Some work friends, of course, are closer than others. Some are your age, some are older, some are married with children. Still, you do get together outside of work occasionally to play cards or see a movie or play softball. These are the people you see as much as your wife or girlfriend, so you better like them.

Luckily, I do have this situation, unlike some people I know who really don’t like the people they work with. I really respect and look up to most of the people I work with and I am truly proud that I can hang out with them and have fun and talk to them like friends. Thankfully I also have a girlfriend and a best friend in the area to keep me in check, not to mention my sister and my parents, who you can never get rid of (which is a good thing). I’m sure in the next phase of life (presumably marriage), I will have “married friends” who I hang out with, and by this time the high school and college people will have fallen even further off of the ladder.

Unfortunately, I don’t often see the people who were once as important to me as my friends are now. Some of these people I never ever see due to tremendous growth apart or other circumstances. The people I see infrequently are still important to me, of course, and it just sucks to be kept away from them at times. When we do get together, though, it’s not like hanging out with them once was. It’s usually getting caught up on work and life and reminiscing about the old days when life was easier. Anyway, I miss them.

Sometimes I really feel like I’m getting old. I’m going to be really depressed when I am actually old. I hope I at least have friends.

I think most people would agree that parents are a good place to go to find answers to life’s problems. They’ve usually had anywhere from two to ten times as much life experience as you, and even though they can sometimes be out of touch with present society, some things just never change. Although I have received quite a bit of help in life from my mom, most of the best advice I’ve received was often imparted to me by my dad.

I can point to many conversations that he and I have had where I have come out of it having some better understanding of myself, other people, and/or the way the world works in general. In fact, there are many times when he will give me his thoughts on something and I will flashback to previous talks we’ve had where he’s pretty much said the same thing in a different way, proving that I constantly need to be reminded. At any rate, we are both very consistent.

The two things that I’ve learned from my dad that have come into play of late are “don’t make a decision until you have all of the information” and “be a nice prick”. The first piece of advice there is pretty self-explanatory, but nonetheless, I have to continue to tell myself to wait for all the bits of information before deciding anything since I always have a tendency to jump the gun and make uninformed decisions. That second piece of advice, though, “be a nice prick”, could easily be taken out of context and misinterpreted, but is really just a succinct way of essentially saying “take care of yourself above all, particularly when dealing with people who don’t really care about you all that much, but still maintain integrity, kindness and human decency.” I hope I’m not butchering this, but I guess it’s kind of a hard concept to describe. However, when my dad said it to me a couple of years ago, it just made sense.

There are a number of people in life who we deal with all the time, day in and day out, who we perceive as “friends”. Very often, however, these people are merely acquaintances whose sole purpose in being nice and giving things to us is driven by their desire to get something from us. I think in general we forget this all the time. We need to make sure that we are looking out for number one – ourselves – and not determining our actions based on anything that these people do or say. In general, only a handful of close friends or family should have that effect.

Anyway, this wisdom imparted to me by my father is something of a motto for me these days. More and more I realize that I just need to “be a nice prick” when I’m dealing with the vast majority of people that I deal with on a daily basis. You should try it too.

The year 2005 is over and it’s time for my yearly ritual of looking back and determining what I learned, what I’d like to change, who I care about, what I care about, and all that “fresh start” stuff. The past couple of years seem to have been balancing acts for me…I’ve lost something significant and gained something significant. In 2004, right at the end of the year, I lost a girlfriend, but gained a best friend. In 2005 I gained a (much better) girlfriend, but right before the year finished, I lost a grandfather. It’s this loss that I will write about here because it’s one of the only remaining things from 2005 that I haven’t truly dealt with yet, I suppose.

Though the past 10 years or so I would not consider my grandpa and I to have been particularly close (he and my grandma lived in Las Vegas and I saw them at the most twice a year), I would say that the impact my grandpa had on me as a child is second only to my parents. While my dad is certainly the male role model in my life, my grandpa was to a large extent as well. Many would say that my love of humor, my love of baseball, and of course my love of food all came from my parents and largely my dad, but any or all of those things could just as easily be attributed to my grandpa too. So anyway, here’s my therapeutic (though not nearly exhaustive) list of things that I’ll never forget about my grandpa:

I’ll never forget how when he’d make a surprise visit to our house, I’d run to greet him and he’d hold out his hand for me to give him “five”; then when I did, he’d pretend like I slapped so hard that I hurt him.

I’ll never forget watching Dodger games with him (and my dad), learning about the intricacies of the game, and yelling at the TV with him before we ate dinner.

I’ll never forget him sitting with me in my car just after I got my license and telling me that if I just get my oil changed every 3,000 miles that I would have my car forever (and I believed him because he had his car forever).

I’ll never forget all the times he answered a waiter’s question of “Can I get you anything?” with “Yeah, a stack of hundred dollar bills,” as he held his thumb and forefinger out to indicate the size of the stack.

I’ll never forget seeing him plow through endless bowls of soup at Vegas buffets (or anywhere else for that matter) and still eating the rest of his meal too.

I’ll never forget driving to Radio Shack with him and picking up a battery for his ancient computer because it wasn’t keeping time.

I’ll never forget seeing him on his way up to light a candle with me at my Bar Mitzvah when he suddenly stopped and danced to “In The Mood” with my grandma for a short couple of seconds.

I’ll never forget the stories he would tell of New York, of his time in the service, of my mom’s youth, of all the past events that occurred long before I was even a thought in anyone’s head.

In the aftermath of all of this, the result is that my grandma and my great aunt are both moving to California to live together no less than ten minutes away from me. My grandma is the only grandparent I have left, and though her moving here will drastically change the lives of my family and myself, I am excited to soak up as many more great memories with her as I can while she’s here with us.

I think I gained more in 2005 than I’m even aware of, and I’m sure I lost even less than I probably feel. So 2006 is here and I’m ready for a new round of gains and losses that I’m sure will result in a net gain, just like 2005 did.

Happy New Year!

I have heard the term “good problem” a few times in the past couple of weeks and I wonder what it really means. I’ve particularly heard it in the context of three situations that have been presented to me as “good problems”:

1. “The company has so many products in their pipeline that they don’t yet have the resources to handle their production.”
2. “The employee is so desired by other groups that he has plenty of departments to choose from to transfer to.”
3. “The baseball team has more infielders than they really need, but they are all talented.”

These all seem to stem from the idea that having too much of something is a “good problem” to have. I guess I don’t see the distinction. A problem is a problem. Sure, having too many products, job offers, or infielders certainly beats not having enough products to make money, being unemployed or only having a second baseman. Still, it seems that what are often considered “good problems” really aren’t “good” at all, but just “better” than some arbitrary alternative. Wouldn’t you rather have just a few really good products that make a ton of money and that you can produce in an efficient manner? Wouldn’t you rather just have a job that you are satisfied with and that pays you enough money? Wouldn’t you rather just have four really good ball players who each play a single infield position well and can hit for average and power? I would think so. If you are spending money to develop products that you can’t make, or wasting it on infielders who you can’t play, or constantly looking for where the grass may be greener, you are probably tackling the wrong “problem”, or at least not going about solving it the right way.

I think our society today lives in a culture where having options is a good thing. We make our own choices in this day and age, so the more options we have, the better off we feel. But when does having too many options become a real “bad” problem? I mean, we have so many choices of restaurants to eat at, stores to shop at, brands to buy, and channels to watch that we just take them all for granted. That’s what capitalism is really all about, right? A series of “good problems” to have? I think “good problem” is an oxymoron. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Ever notice how some people never change? I mean some people go through life and mature and grow and learn. Others just sort of don’t. I’d like to believe that I fall in the former category rather than the latter, but it seems like I’m coming across more and more people who are pretty much the same as they were one, two, three, five, or ten years ago. Why?

The way I see it, there are four possibilities to explain this phenomenon:

1. Nobody ever changes. People may grow and learn but personalities stay the same and that’s why it seems like they never change.
2. Everybody changes but some people don’t forecast this change. They grow and learn but still act and appear the same to us because we don’t really know them that well any more.
3. We see people how we want to see them. We know or knew people one way, so that is how we will always see them regardless of whether they change or not. (This is similar to number two, but not exactly the same: in number two we aren’t shown the change, in this case we just don’t see it.)
4. Finally, it’s entirely possible that the old adage that “some things never change” is just a load of shit but we just all believe it because we’ve heard it before.

Okay, here comes some fuzzy logic based on these four completely arbitrary answers to my question of why.

I just can’t believe that it’s number one because some people, I think, do change significantly over time. I don’t think it’s number four because old adages usually turn out to be true. So I would say that it is some combination of numbers two and three.

This is why I actually love this forum for myself. I can write whatever the hell I want, back it up, make weak arguments, and come out believing myself. It’s genius.

So, finally, my conclusion to this whole mess.

I look at people that I’ve known in my past lives as a high school student, a college student, a working professional, and a boyfriend, a friend, or an acquaintance (and these are the people I’m talking about since people you see all the time rarely seem to change anyway because you see them gradually change if they do at all) and I wonder many things. How could I have ever been associated with this person? Why did these people exit my life? What did I get out of them at the time? What did they get out of me? Do I seem the same to them like they seem the same to me? I never have answers to these questions. I’m sure I never will. Still, I’m eternally puzzled by the present lives of past friends.