Category Archives: Friendship

Choose To Be Nice

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Picking up a Saturday night pizza and salad. A scrawny, pale Boomer with straight hair half way down his back and an earring materializes next to me. I have no doubt I could take him, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

He’s looking at individual slices. A 20 year-old Evergreen State College student making $15/hour asks him if he’s been helped.

I don’t know if I write well enough to capture the depth of his cruelty.

“Have I been helped? Would I like anything?! No, I’m just standing here looking at the pizza because I don’t know, maybe I want pizza.”

I’m dumbstruck, but she keeps it completely together and explains what the slices are. He says something about being vegan.

I wish my peabrain engaged more quickly. It wasn’t until I was in the car that I realized what I should have said/done.

Asked him, “Were you born a dickhead or is it a more recent development?”

There are two types of jobs. Those where you have to deal with the public and those where you don’t. A young woman at the Westside Vic’s deserves a “public dickhead” bonus.

”

Sentence To Ponder

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Follow up to last post. Cohen argues that homophobia, and its cousin, homohysteria, or the fear of being thought homosexual because of behavior that is typically considered gender atypical, conspire against close male friendships in the (dis)United States.

At the same time, she writes:

Homophobia has declined over the last few decades, and with less stigma attached to being gay, researchers have found that homohysteria has eroded too.”

Given those complimentary trends, maybe younger men stand a better chance of developing more robust systems of support than in the past.

Or maybe Cohen and the researchers she cites are almost exclusively coastal elites who are slighting the cultural impediments that continue to rob men of emotional intimacy throughout large swaths of the fruited plains.

Paragraph To Ponder

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From The Other Significant Others by Rhaina Cohen.

“Having fewer close friends is associated with loneliness, and loneliness is linked to a variety pack of negative health outcomes, from high blood pressure to depression to cognitive decline. Compared to women who lose their husbands, men who lose their spouses experience a much more pronounced and long-lasting spike in loneliness and depression; they’re more likely than women to die by suicide. Researchers attribute these differences to women having more diverse systems of social support.”

The First Year Writing Seminar

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Is always evolving. This fall’s iteration. Would you sign up?

The Art and Science of Human Connection—Ron Byrnes, Education

     In this seminar we work together to improve as readers, discussants, and writers while exploring the challenges and rewards of meaningful friendships. Our readings, discussions, and writing overlap with the University’s Wild Hope Project, which asks, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” We will be as introspective and transparent as possible as we get to know one another’s stories and draw on history and social sciences to explore what’s most important in life. Among the questions we’ll consider: What makes life most meaningful? How do we want to balance work and individual economic aspirations with recreation and close interpersonal relationships with others? What is easy about making friends and what is hard? How can we be better friends to ourselves and others? And does social media make it easier or harder to build strong interpersonal relationships?

Sentence To Ponder

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“The ‘Golden Bachelor’ reality TV couple, who wed on national television after a romance that captivated viewers with the possibility of finding love late in life, announced on Friday they are divorcing just three months into their marriage.”

I was not among the viewers, let alone the “captivated” viewers, but this does make me wonder what else might not be real on t.v.

Phenomenon To Ponder

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Karen Kreider Yoder’s story perfectly captures 2024.

“It was a June afternoon in the Rockies just after I retired when we agreed that we must be turning into ghosts.

We had been cycling in the mountains since breaking camp before dawn, and we decided to splurge on a private room in a hostel. We checked in and headed through to the bike-storage area, walking our rig by young hostelers congregated in the common spaces.

We must have been a sight: two bedraggled 60-somethings pushing a tandem bicycle laden like a pack mule.

Except no one seemed to see us.

We crossed the living room, where 20-something hikers with ruddy faces studied their computer screens. No one looked up. We inched through the kitchen, where others were sautéing onions for a group meal. ‘Excuse us. Sorry to interrupt,’ one of us said as we squeezed through. ‘That sure smells good.’

They turned a bit, giving us space. But not a word. Not a ‘How’s it going?’ nor ‘Where’d you come from?’ nor ‘Cool rig.’ Nor eye contact.”

Help! I Can’t Read ‘Dear Prudence’.

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I enjoy reading a lot of periodicals, but quite a few not enough to pay for regular, unlimited access. Given the limits of time, even if they cost less, in many cases I’d still pass.

The Guardian takes an interesting, Wikipedia-like approach of saying, “Hey, we notice you’ve read this many articles lately, how ’bout ponying up a little you cheap son-of-a-bitch, and you know, enable our journos to feed their families.” Well, something like that.

There’s one pub, Slate.com, that I’m uncharacteristically quite conflicted about not having access to. All because of Slate’s ‘Dear Prudence’ advice column. And it’s all because of their steady diet of seriously clickbaity headlines.

I am weak, so I wanna click, click, click these.

Help! My Husband’s Appearance Has Deteriorated to a Frightening Degree.

Help! My Sister Insists I Invite Her Disastrous Husband to My Bachelor Party. Oh No.

Help! My Husband Interprets Every Little Thing as “Evidence” of an Affair.

Help! My Wife Thinks She’s Great at Socializing. Yikes.

Help! My Priest Told Me He’s Leaving His Priesthood for Me.

You are right! My life would be enriched by a steady diet of ‘Dear Prudence’ exchanges of this nature.* So I should just pay up.

Thank you for listening.

*unless the Good Wife is responsible for the first