Hey there! Thank you for clicking. Welcome to another installment of Musing Interrupts. The auditory experience that hopefully leaves you wanting to ask questions and maybe even share your answers because this isn’t even half of the conversation. Today, Making Friends after Kindergarten. Is it possible and/or even desirable?
I’ll start with the practicality of making friends after your 30s. It’s not. People are generally not forthcoming, their guards are up, Shields up, Scotty! I have a few choice words, not politically correct, which come to mind. Basically, several adults are pusillanimous and prove we have never actually escaped Hobbes’ state of nature. Whatever is behind this is more of a chicken and the egg situation. The question might be: were people hurt and therefore decided to shut the world out, or are people intrinsecly meanies? Either way, it seems that life Sucks. The underlying issue is trust and motivation. Can you trust the person who smiles at you? Are they motivated to get something from you? Are you just a means to an end? Can your boss be your friend? You won’t truly know until the power relationship is gone. Don’t get me started on car salespeople. Is there friendship after psychoanalysis? I’d never thought much of the situation until someone indicated my classes were like talking to a friend. Like? I thought I was a friend.
Kindergarten was easy. Wanna play? Here’s my truck, can I play with your blocks? Parents would set up playdates, we played, we fought, we lived to play again another day. There was no need to be friends with everyone. If it didn’t work out, that was life. Then, elementary school came along and along came the bullies. These poor children most likely suffered abuse and abused others. We still have a problem with that at schools. Nobody seems to know how to get a handle on it. At that age, kids know where they stasnd. Friends are crucial during those years. Those friendships were honest, there was no second-guessing involved. If you said, let’s be number one best friend forever, you were. I still think of my number one best friend from time to time. We are Facebook Friends.
So many types of friendships happen between kindergarten and our twenties. Real friends, new friends, old friends, friends who are old,  fake friends, friendly friends, fickle friends, fierce friends, disappearing friends, Facebook friends, Frenimies, On Wednesday’s we wear pink,  the six chicks, the pink ladies, Breakfast Club of Misfits, the friends you go to the Coffee Shop on Tuesday’s with (CLAP, that is supposed to be the clap that you know), the friends you go to the pub with, which are not the same friends you go pub crawling with, abooga booogada boogada hahaha (that is another reference), friends you talk about sex with, friends you have sex with, army buddies, dead poets that join a society, friends who will stand by you, and friends you complete your bucket list with, oh wait… the friend you sit on the porch with as you age.  My early twenties were great, it was so long ago for me that it might as well have been kindergarten. I’m that old now. Beware of my sneezing, old. Friends were easy to make. Between Friday evening and Monday morning, legends and friends were made. I wonder what the forties and on have in store. I’m just going to jump over the thirties because I’m still processing the whole Did that really just happen? Factor. In any case, difficult or not, making friends at any age is worth it, not just because of the opportunities to remake certain key movie moments, but because of the potential of making your own epic stories that have never been told in that way, through the eyes of happiness, laughter, solidarity, a part of your home.
Do you like your friends? I mean, really like them?...

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