Friends In Name Only?

Friends, and what they are, and how we feel about them as defined in today's world is a complicated thing. The only way someone can really answer the question, "How many friends do you have?" is based on their social media right? As of this moment, I have 748 Facebook friends with another one pending. That seems so silly to me. How can a friend be "pending?" Who is to say how someone can be a good friend, or what that even means? We try really hard to figure this sort of thing out so we feel secure in what we have in terms of relationships with others. As humans, we're social creatures more so than any other living thing.

I want to add a wrinkle to what perceptions we have about friends. I'm also going to call this friend by their real name.

I have a group of friends who I met as a teenager because we had a mutual interest in reading books by a particular author. We met over a summer, and we would meet together every day, and talk about the inexplicable things that pop into the minds of fifteen year-old youth. We decided to come up with a name for our own little group of friends, and called it the Muffin Club. Super original. Muffins are right up there with bacon, monkeys, cheese, the word "random", and a handful of other things that 15 year-olds think are funny for really no reason. So through this summer, and surprisingly as time went on, even though we didn't go to the same schools, we kept the MC alive. 

The group consisted of me and about four girls. I thought I was SO cool. One of these girls, Eponine, would end up becoming one of my closest friends. We talked regularly, and out of all the people in that group, she and I were the closest. to this day, we still keep in excellent contact. We dated for a little bit, and I was actually the first boy Eponine ever smooched. That didn't end too well, but she forgave me, and we went back to being friends. I went on an LDS mission, and she consistently wrote me good thick letters. In fact, on the toughest day I had when I wanted to quit and punch my missionary companion squarely in the nose, I got a really encouraging letter from her. She went on her own mission to Russia, and I wrote her all of twice. So that was four years of our lives where we didn't see one another.Since she came back we were attending schools in different states, I was married, and the only time we'd really talk was at 2am when I was working graveyards, and she would type in Russian while I practiced writing in Chinese. We didn't see each other again until last week when I met her at the school I transferred to.

I should also take this time to mention that we met online. 

Yep. It's true. This nice girl was one of those people who went by a screen name (Eponine) for the first several months of "knowing one another." We were talking about it, and we've spoken face to face less than ten times. Yet she's one of my best friends. When we were talking face to face the other day I realized things I never knew about her. She communicates a lot with her eye brows. Her hair had been cut much shorter than I remembered it because I'd really only seen it in pictures for the past several years. Her laugh sounded different than I had remembered, or maybe just imagined it in my head. 

I also contemplated on the fact that she's never "been there" for me, nor really I for her. I've never called her when my car needed a jump start or when I needed a ride. If I had a date back out on me at that last minute, which happened all the time, I never called her. She never invited me to her shows. One of the few times I set her up on a date with someone I knew, it ended up being her second-cousin. 

But our friendship is still legitimate. I think what makes her such a good friend is the fact that we share ideas, and we talk. Even if long spaces of time go by we still have a friendship we can fall back on. That makes me happy.

-Scott

As a PostScript, the last blog I wrote, the one about burned Bridges? I sent that blog post and a "Happy Half-Birthday!" post to the person I wrote it about, and she read, and responded, and is talking to me again. We're even Facebook friends. Never give up on friends.