F.R.I.E.N.D.S

I am very selective while making friends and don’t bother to keep in touch either. So, I have very few friends at all points in my life. Now, I have realized that all my friends (except for my immediate circle in college) are either inaccessible (I mean they live somewhere near ‘The Cape of good hope’) or are loners.

Most importantly we don’t have similar eating habits, i.e., I have them and they don’t.

When we step into restaurant: the first words that come out of their mouth

1. I only eat homemade food.

2. I am counting calories (the reason I get a fit every time one of my friends gains a little holiday weight).

3. I am full.

4. I am boycotting the food processing industry for their overpriced rates and tests on animals.

5. I have a fast (dude, was this the only day you could think of to hang out with friends).

6. Friend: (looking at the menu*) hmmm

(half an hour later)

Me: (banging my head against the table) anything?

Friend: let’s go somewhere else**

7. I don’t eat (true story).

There are others like perpetual stomach ailments, germ phobia, and chronic indecisiveness.

This was until a week ago.

Present day

I met an old friend X..she was distressed and we met after a long time (a common friend also joined us). Although X knew what she wanted and there was nothing we had to do, by the end of the day I knew she felt better (and so did we). Just being around the people you love without the fear of being judged is in itself comforting.

The fact remains that I have a countable (by a 4 year old) number of friends (inaccessible and/or loners), but it is also true that they are the people who are special to me (and hopefully I am special to them) and that’s what matters.

In a nutshell, I used to think that the soundtrack of my social life was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY3kqRRzJP0 and then I realized that it is in fact http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULsXdDqOBo&feature=related

*contemplating laws of nature, ventilation, sunlight, background track and the crowd to calculate the approximate amount of time for which all the people in the restaurant can survive without getting bored in case we get trapped due to some natural disaster and also the chances of survival in case of a stampede

**probably because the estimate of the time calculated in * turns out to be less than the approximate amount of time for rescue to get there