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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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”.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-philosophical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}