On Friendship - The Super and the Superficial

Cliff and Norm were the best of bar buddies. All day long Cliff kept his community connected while Norm crunched their numbers. All day long they looked forward to spending the last few hours of daylight in an underground bar with people who were just as like-minded. They looked forward to watching whatever was playing on the muted TV,  and hoping someone else used their quarters wisely in the jukebox. They look forward to sharing a beer, and maybe a few shots with people who were just as beaten as they were. But were they friends on the outside? I'm not so sure. Sam, Coach and Woody weren't really your friends. Carla may have been sweet on a few of her regulars, but once she clocked out and counted her tips, all she cared about were her kids, and Nick or Eddie; probably both. Diane and Rebecca didn't care about you even when they were working, let alone when they clocked out. Nobody cared what Harry the Hat did to get "two to ten, with time off for good behavior." They were just happy he was there to entertain them and watch him cheat other people out of their money.

There is a bar I go to. There are people I really enjoy seeing. There are a few dogs I whose jowls I love to scratch. There are a few bartenders I really enjoy talking to. There are a few people I get to nerd-out about Star Trek with. There are a few people I get to talk about music with. There are a few people I get to talk about the neighborhood with. There are people I get to watch close-captioned Family Feud and Cash Cab with. The conversation is never very deep, and it is very seldom, if ever, personal. I know very little about the personal lives of my fellow locals and regulars, and I'm OK with that. My fellow regulars do for me what Cliff and Norm did for each other; they helped wash the day away. They are there to share a kind word, a funny story, neighborhood news. We all come from different walks of life, different religions and philosophies; different incomes, different stages in our lives. When we enter the bar, we are all equals. But our friendship doesn't often extend beyond the backside of the 21 and Over sign and into the street. That's not to say that any of these folks can't be my friends outside of the bar, however; a few of them are friends outside of the bar, but it's OK that not all of them need to be.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have an amazing group of close friends. We make up an incredible village. The strength of this village has been tested a few times, and I take great comfort in knowing that we can depend on each other and weather our storms together.   It's made us stronger, both individually as well as a group. We all played a role in helping each other through life's displeasures. I am thankful for my village and proud to be a part of it.

I write all this because I saw a video on the FB that someone posted the other day about friendship. I've been chewing on it because it made me kind of mad and thought, perhaps, that I had missed the point. I don't think I did.  On the surface, it sounded, well, sound, but then it didn't.  The speaker on the video said you will know who your closest friends are by the way they stick by you when you face adversity. While I do believe that is true, the person on the video went on to say that all friends who don't stick closer than a brother need to be cut out of your life, they are toxic. I don't believe that. I don't believe that every one of my friends bears the same responsibility or serves the same purpose.  I don't believe I have the right to discount a friendship because I don't feel comfortable divulging my deepest secrets to them. A friendship is a friendship. Sure, dump those who are dicks, but not everyone is a dick.

From the super close to the superficial, there are many other levels of friendships in between. Work friends, school friends, bar friends, neighborhood friends; they all lend different levels of support, different kinds of comfort. In the Venn diagram of my friendships, there are certainly overlapping categories and similarities. All friends enrich my life, but not every friend needs to know you at your worst. Sometimes the best friendship one can give you is consistency; knowing which friend to call for the comfort you are seeking. Having different types of friends is great. Sometimes all you need is someone to share a beer with and watch bad TV on mute with while rock 'n' roll plays in the background. Sometimes you need someone to help you out with your cell phone bill for the month. Sometimes you need a hug. Sometimes you need someone to hold your hair when you puke. Sometimes you need someone to housesit. Sometimes you need someone who really understands you to help you work through a problem. Sometimes you need someone to discuss the latest episode of The Orville with. Sometimes you need guidance from someone with a shared history. Sometimes you need to use your old best jokes on someone who has never heard them before. Not any one person needs to serve all those needs. It's not fair to your friends to expect them to give you everything you need.

It's just as OK and necessary to have casual friends as it is necessary to have close friends.

Trickle Down Economics - A Pointless Rant about Water Walter

I have never been the kind of mom who enjoys going to playgrounds. I don't really like going to the playground. Now that my kids are older and I don't need to be with them the whole time, and I can sit on a bench and read, the playground is OK, but for the most part, the playground has never been my jam. One of the things that bother me at playgrounds is the other adults; not all of them, just some of them. Like the ones who think it's OK to sit on the play structures and play on their phones, blocking the kids' path and thwarting every single game of "the sand is lava."

One thing I do like about the playgrounds in my neighborhood is the unspoken rule of sand-toy sharing. If a kid leaves their toys in the sand and then say, goes to play on the swings, their toys are fair game for other kids to play with so long as they don't take the toys out of the sandbox and they stop playing with the toys when it's time to pack them up and go home. I don't know if this is common in other neighborhoods, but it is in mine. It is a good practice.

Anywhoozle, I had me an incident a few weeks ago.

Pua and I were at the playground. There were a lot of kids there that day and a good number of them were playing in the sand, making trips to and from the water fountain filling their buckets and cups in the dispenser for water bottles.

Pua started playing with some boys, 2nd or 3rd grade looking. She going back and forth to the fountain and sandbox filling their bucket. Pua was happy to stand in line with all the other kids at the fountain waiting to fill her bucket. On one particular trip to the fountain, she and a grown-up, a grown ass man, were walking to the fountain. He beat her to the fountain with his gallon sized bucket and started filling his, before letting her fill her pint sized bucket. I walked over to them. I asked him why he didn't let her go first. Her pint sized bucket would take only 30 seconds to fill, his gallon sized bucket was going to take a 4 minutes (I know, I did the math). He said "we're working together." I looked at what he thought "working together" was. Her bucket was at the bottom of the fountain picking up all of the water that came out of the leaky pipes. I looked at the man and said "Ah, Trickle Down Economics, nice." The man got a weird look on his face, then gave me a really dirty look; (Ok so to him 10 out of 10 getting the reference, but negative several million points for actually thinking that method is fair.)

With her trickles from the leaky water dispenser, Pua and I then walked back to the sandbox. He followed me and asked me if I was upset with him. I told him that he should have let her go first since her bucket was so tiny and he was a grown-ass man with a gallon-sized bucket, 8 times bigger than her little bucket. He said he was filling water for his daughters sandbox. I told him that's all well and good, but they were the only two at the fountain at the time, and the decent and grown up thing to do would have been to let the little girl take 30 seconds to fill her bucket and not make her wait 4 minutes for him to fill his.

He got in my face and with weird bits of spit in the corners of his mouth, asked me loudly if I was accusing him of depriving my daughter of water. I told him I wasn't accusing him of depriving her of water, I was accusing him of establishing dominance over her and making her pick up his scraps by telling her to collect the water from the leaky pipes. He stared at me in disbelief. I stared at him until he broke the gaze, then I got up and walked over to another seat at the other side of the sandbox.

Turns out the boys Pua was playing with were his sons. They scolded him for not letting her go first and then followed it up with "Dad, just let it go. We're playing nicely," they said.
For the rest of our time at the playground we sat at opposite ends of the sandbox, glaring at each other and watching our respective kids play together nicely.