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My Profile
Fairytales for a Practical Princess - 2008-11-30
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9:09 a.m. - 2005-07-30
You know how guys can compartmentalize their friends? Like, the buddy might be a real jerk in most ways but there's nobody the guy would rather go fishing with? I envy guys for their ability to have activity specific friends. I can't be friends with someone whose core values I disagree with just because we do ceramics together. Friendly? Sure. But real friends? Nuh uh. Take a Net friend I had for a while. This pre-dates my coming to D-land, btw. Don't anybody get paranoid. At first look it seemed like we had a whole bunch in common. Same age, MS, 2 kids with a big age gap, she and I talked easily and had similar points of reference. She occasionally made an off comment, vaguely racist or sexist, but I chalked it up to her being from the hinterlands of PA. News travels slow up thar in them hills and the stuff she said sounded more 20 years ago small-town than truly mean. WRONG! After she and I had been friends for a while a Puerto Rican family moved into the other half of her duplex. She got hysterical. Filthy, nasty bigoted stuff came pouring out of her. The mildest epithet she used was calling her new neighbors 'greasy beaner bugs'. I was grossed out. I mean completely. BLAM! Friendship over. That was a pretty easy one. Not hard to say good-bye to a racist, I don't care how much other stuff we have in common. But what happens where there isn't a big honking ugly? What happens when your friend lets you down in a lot of small ways? Not necessarily moral failings, but things that sort of bother you like chronic lateness or listening to Lite Country. What's the ratio of bad to good? How much do you put up with for the sake of friendship? I don't expect all my friends to have very single thing in common with me. Boring, for one thing. And rather arrogant on my part, like I have a lock on The One Correct Way to think and live? So I might not be able to talk books with This-a-one. That-a-one I always meet out somewhere or at my house because she's got a pack of dogs with no manners and poor house training skills. But on the whole my friends have the same outlook on stuff I think is important. This is where I've hit the wall with Maureen. I like her. I like her a lot. She's got a very kind heart. She's busy and full of life. Doesn't play games or keep score about who called who last. All things I find necessary in a good friend. Bonus points because our kids get along. Ditto the husbands. Triple bonus points for being exactly my age, liking the same kind of music I do, and having other friends I enjoy and look forward to adding to my circle. But…she doesn't read. Strike that. She reads, but she doesn't read fiction. I'll get to what she reads in a minute. She also completely and boastfully ignores the news and politics. This one chaps me. Big time. As does the knowledge that she has a fine mind, but is kind of dumb(?), unschooled maybe? In any case her glaring lack of basic geographical knowledge is startling. Then there's her spending habits. Granted, it's not my call that she's at the 6th gate of credit hell and is one busted furnace away from losing everything. Overdrawn, over limit, double mortgaged, and still the party never stops. This irks me. Being so heedless implies a spoiled child view of things. It's bad enough that 10 years from now she'll have 3 kids in college who'll be starting down their own road to Never-ending Debt Land because of massive student loans and their own maxed out cards, but I am uncomfortable with knowing this fun fun life she lives is built on a towering and shaky pile of plastic. It bothers my conscience to eat $40 a pound gigantic shrimp while sitting next to her pool, listening to the Stones on Bose speakers when I know all this hedonistic stuff is digging them a deeper hole. Not my responsibility, I know. And I know the party goes on whether I'm there or not. But Hakuna Matata just isn't my style, you dig? I want to be friends with grown-ups and Maureen's financial Peter Pan lifestyle is childish. All debts come due someday, my friends. Real grown-ups know this and plan accordingly. Then there's the spiritual stuff. She just became a reiki master. Good deal. And I very much approve of my friends' quests for spiritual meaning. So that Maureen is running the gauntlet of New Age philosophy and alternative religions is cool. (Here comes the 'but'), BUT her 'deep' insights are pretty fricken shallow. She's rather hung up on the cool factor of tarot and angels and spirit animals too. Her dilettante approach doesn't help either. With each new book and after every crackpot seminar she's acquired a whole new sensation and everything is aligned according to this new philosophy. This week it's crystals and spectrum meditation, next week it'll be Native American smoke huts and peyote. I have trouble with people who 'flit' through stuff I've kept faith with and practiced my entire life. Witching and paganism already suffer enough at the hands of quacks and posers, to say nothing of the Prof Trelawney types who make mockeries of us all with their spangled shawl flakiness, this faddishness on Maureen's part just pisses me off. Because that's ALL it is with her. A fad. She might not believe so right now, but I guarantee in 2 years her Celestine Prophecy and her spirit journey diary will be buried under a heap of quilting fabric and a couple of tennis racquets. Even this wouldn't be too bad, if only she wouldn't talk about it all the time. She has to share all her visions and profound thoughts. Like I care. She expects me to take all her junk seriously! And be all mystical and goose pimply with soul awe. (SNORT) It's all I can do not to smack her and tell her to stop playing around with things she'll never have the discipline and focus to truly understand. I swear, if she was already into quilting and mixed doubles, she and I would be just fine. I could deal with a spendy, non-political friend who is a learner of sports and crafts. If she was flitting through interior design and cake decorating I'd listen happily while she enthused on the wonder of chenille upholstery and 7-minute frosting. And segway nicely into her fling with banjo picking and cooking with whole grains. I'd spend a summer golfing with her and then next year cheer her on at clog dancing competitions. I don't mind hopscotching through those kinds of activities. But like trying to eat those gaudy shrimp next to the pool excavated with Visa card shovels, I can't truly enjoy conversations about meaningful things with someone who has put all of 10 minutes' thought into her beliefs. It's just wrong. The good is perfectly balanced with the off-putting. Think I'm mostly venting here. I truly think Maureen has the stuff to be a good friend, but we aren't quite close enough yet for me to be able to discuss how I feel about some of the thornier things. I want to give this relationship the grace time it needs to grow into the real kind of friendship where we could talk about these things and not misunderstand each other. I'll bet she has a couple of items she'd like to bring up with me too. Time will tip things one way or the other. In the meantime I'll keep mulling aloud here. And when Maureen starts in on her Jack Handy insight of the moment, I'll distract her with a flyer from clog dancing school. May your spirit animal be housebroken, ~LA
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