MAKING FRIENDS WITH FRIENDS

Making friends is as easy as stepping out your front door.

Odds are good that someone will walk by from somewhere else.

It’s up to you to break the ice.

Or maybe you’re out walking around and have a conversation with a stranger that seems more like a friend you just met.

The important thing is making a familiar connection.

Try and remember what it was like at the beginning of each school year.

There was always someone new who fit in like they’d been there from the start.

Maybe you hit off from the beginning.

That’s the feeling you get with friends new and old.

Is there a difference between the two?

 

School Friends Never Fade

Baby boomers have had more than a few high school reunions.

I’ve never missed one, if you don’t count the five year.

I don’t.

Besides I was living on the other side of the country.

 By now it’s been fifty years down the line with wife and kids and grandkids.

The wife and I don’t talk about our grandkids with others because we get too hyped up.

Sound like grandparents to you, the kind with the most special, precious, grandkids who’ve ever set foot on earth?

We’ve got ’em and I’d post about them like a nut if didn’t respect boundaries, one of which is don’t post about grandkids.

I didn’t make the rule but I follow it.

We all follow the rules, right?

With that said, my wife has a few other rules, like don’t post about her.

That’s a tough one because she is a motherlode of blog material.

On top of that, she has a motherlode of friends who are loaded with blog material.

Look, if you’re a writer, a blogger, you either forage for inspiration, or follow an established pattern.

 

Writing blog posts can help an entrepreneur promote a business or help novelists supplement their creative writing. Therefore, the time spent learning how to write a blog post can serve as an investment in your broader career.

 

Foraging For Better Writing

Every rom-com, sit-com, any story, begins with characters who make you wonder about them.

And they’re usually good looking.

You get hooked on the show when you start thinking how much better their relationships are than anyone you might have.

I know I do.

That’s what I thought when Seinfeld was new, then Friends, and Cheers.

Everyone stuck together.

How do people do that in real life?

 

We have that special bond because we were friends from childhood through puberty and losing our virginity. I’ve made good friends since then but never as close as you guys. 

You’re my family.

 

And I will add we are chosen family. Plus we have more time to get together as opposed to when our children were younger, caring for aging and ill parents, etc.

 

Chosen Family Ties

When you make the right choice:

 

For the last four days a group of women from high school and earlier gathered for their yearly meeting.

They catch up with each other, eat and drink, and plan for their next meeting.

Their resolve to stay together is inspiring in so many ways.

The glue between them is sharing a time and place growing up that flies under the radar when most people think of Los Angles.

Their town was in LA County, but not part of the city. It was a census designated place, which is another way of saying ‘unincorporated.’

The five women in the group grew up LA renegades.

None of them live in LA.

I think that’s one of their bonds: they all knew they’d grow up and live somewhere else.

Like the two movies they are all baby boomers; unlike the two movies they aren’t college friends who met where everyone was new and the bonds were desperate attempts to explain themselves to new people.

These are women who know each others’ mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters.

They are a community unto themselves where no one needs to explain anything they don’t already know.

Their bond is provided by shared life experiences and true affection for one another.

It has lasted with the addition of husbands and kids and dogs.

 

Everyone is holding strong.