Friends
It was a slightly
funny, but slightly sad situation that we ran into today while driving around
Las Vegas. Alicia was talking about going to a restaurant, and having something
set up so that at a restaurant you could put a bunch of smaller parties, or
even solo diners together and force them into a family setting dinner where you
have to share things and eat around a bi table. The idea was to get ten people
that didn’t know each other, and share in a big meal, and then she said, or you
could just get ten people that you knew together and do the same thing, it
doesn’t have to be ten strangers. This brought up the awkward topic because I
said something along the lines that I wouldn’t be able to do that, and Alicia
doubted me.
I didn’t really want to
push the topic beause I ddidn’t want to argue about how few friends I had, but
her limitations were this, it had to be in one area, and they had to be people
that I would like to at least eat a meal with, they didn’t have to be my
besties, but they had to at least be someone that I could share a lunch with
without wanting to hurt people.
Even by those
standards, I’d need to drag in some strangers into the meal to make it work.
Let’s go into the two big areas that I have friends, or at least people I could
sit down and eat a meal with; Las Vegas and Utah Valley. Of course I’m not counting
Alicia in either one of these groups because the entire point of this was
talking about having a table of 10 full of friends, not a table of 10 with your
friends and then the person that you want to spend the rest of forever with.
Yes, she’s my friend, but she’s also so much more, so she’s not on these lists.
Las Vegas, the friends
I could have dinner with is nice and short, David, Chad, and Danica. Out of
then table for ten, we’d take up 4 of the seats and need 6 more strangers to
tag along.
Utah Valley (Provo,
Orem, American Fork, and all of that junk that sort of just melds together) is
a bit closer to the ten - Josh, Seth, Brandon, and then if I’m really pushing
it I could go with some people from work and include Dylan, Jared, Kyle and
Brett. With me included on this table for ten, we’re eight strong, and still
need two strangers to round out the table. The biggest problem with that table
for eight is that I wouldn’t want the first group to interact with the second
group, two completely different set of relationships between those groups.
You can try to pad the
numbers with former bishops, current bishops, elders quorum leaders, old
co-workers that I haven’t seen in years, or even trying to double the numbers
by including spouses that I have no relationships with other than the fact that
they’re married to the person that I am friends with, but that just seems to be
skirting around the fact that when hunting for people to fill a table for ten
that I would have to go outside of people that I consider ‘friends’ and stretch
it to include anyone that I have a slightest relationship with, if even
tangentially. Don’t get me wrong, some of those tangential people are nice, and
they probably have hearts of gold that I could easily add into the short list of
friends, but as of right now, if you have to ask simple questions to me like
what did I major in, you’re most likely not someone that I’d consider a friend.
It’s not like I’m asking for them to know my life story, but simple basic
details about my life are sort of required to be friends in my mind.
There’s a difference
between people being friendly, and people being my friends, and sadly (only
slightly, I’m not too bugged about it, I just wanted to do the actual math to
see if I was right because Alicia seemed to be so certain) in one area I could
not sit a table of 10 with me and my friends.
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