How to find friends
Dave and I are in desperate need of local best friends that want to hang out with us. I’m lumping Dave into this because, he might be too proud to admit it himself.
Since we moved to Austin, our friends have become flaky, stopped returning phone calls and MySpace comments, moved away or are on tour.
I’m not really sure how to find new best friends, as I haven’t done this on my own in a very long time. Try freshman year of high school. These friendships were formed in the chlorine heavy lanes of the campus pool during swim practice. I was wearing nothing but a bathing suit, cap and goggles and feeling pretty vulnerable, so I had nothing to lose by doing everything possible to make those people love me. I still consider them my best friends.
It’s not so easy now. We live on a street of young yuppies and old hipsters and share a wall with six college kids. We cannot relate. I work with moms who have pregnant 16-year-olds, and 20-somethings that decided to do this instead of college, and the occasional cool person that quits as soon as they’re hired.
I miss Saturday nights at Meridian Room and Tuesdays at the Ginger Man. I miss talking about politics and LOST with John. I miss Mike and Dave trying to outdo each other with lame jokes. I miss Lauren’s Louisiana drawl and Alberto’s chatter. I miss sitting at the picnic table outside the Ryan’s apartment on Friday evenings, talking and laughing and daring Sarah to do something I wouldn’t do.
I miss them.
Sidetracked 
We’re in the same boat. I’ve made some friends at work, but I work with them, in an occasionally volatile environment, and sometime the last thing I want to do is hang out with them after work. Mike and I went to an orientation to volunteer with best buddies (www.bestbuddies.org) hoping to make friends that way, but noboy has contacted us yet for any volunteering. We are planning to join a kickball team — but the league we want to join hasn’t updated their website in a while.
In summary, we are pretty much in the situation. We miss you guys and we miss having people to hang out with that don’t turn their phones off and disappear when we were supposed to have plans.
| Posted 17 years agoYeah, this shit isn’t easy. My Chicago friends don’t like the same kind of stuff we like. They’re either married or unreliable. The one cool one is living in Sweden and his girlfriend is about to have a baby.
We need to start hanging out at coffee shops or record stores or book stores or something. I’ve considered doing the bar trivia thing. Lauren suggested bowling. But once you met people you might like to hang out with again, what do you do? Call them? That seems awfully weird. I’d be creeped out if someone wanted to call me. Do we get their email address? Do we hang out in their neighborhood until we bump into them again?
Despair.
| Posted 17 years agoR., I bet Austin has some cool churches (and I don’t mean the chicken place). or, you could have insta-friends once David joins that new free-form jam-jazz weekend band.
Mike, people text now, I believe. I think a call is a good thing to do once just to establish the connection as well as the notion that you’re going to be reaching out. After than, just a general text about the intended activity, e.g. “goin’ to toss the frisbee around, wanna catch?” or, “my legs are sore, come rub ’em!” is generally customary now, I believe.
Or, you can just both do what I do and stay home, all day, every day, in the dark, pining for how good it was in that place the rest of you now refer to awful, smelly, no-good, Dallas.
| Posted 17 years agoSo I have to ask them for their phone number, ~A? That sucks. Oh, and it would take me about a half hour to text “goin’ to toss the frisbee around, wanna catch?”—at which point I won’t really feel like playing Frisbee anymore and I’ll have to frantically try to text them “wait! Imma take a nap instead!” before they leave for the park.
Why can’t cool people just approach us and be cool?
| Posted 17 years agoI’m with you, Mike.
| Posted 17 years agothat’s pretty funny. …esp. when one considers it would then, by your admission, take 30 mins to type “wait! Imma take a nap instead” after which point, they’d already be at your door and you’d be left no other option but to lay on our floor and hide under the front window while texting, “Mike’s dead; go home.” from Lauren’s phone.
Come to think of it, who needs friend with that kind of entertainment?
I don’t get it, it’s weird to say, “We should get together again. What’s you’re number, I’m gonna call your phone so we can stay in touch.” ?
Or, I know, you need cards. Mike & Lauren cards with your photos or somesuch mess on ’em. Front and Back cards that read, “Good Cop” on one side with one photo/name and “Bad Cop” on the other with the other pic/name.
Or, I don’t know – “Bill” and “Hillary” or “batman”, “robin” or “sugar”, “pie”
or a card that just reads, “Mike: Fun at Parties” and lists your gmail address.
another that reads, “Lauren: Totally Awesome” with her address. Just get in the habit of handing them out and let them cool people call you, inspired by your witty cards.
Of course, then you guys can’t pull the M&L Dallas Scam where you make the plans and then duck out early to sleep in front of some grainy Italian film. ;o)
| Posted 17 years agoOh, sorry, I forgot where I am: Rebekah, that last half of the comment applies to you and Dave, too.
…or, should I say you and Mike since you’ve just declared to everyone that you’re now with him?
| Posted 17 years agoYeah, M&L did pull that scam one too many times.
| Posted 17 years ago~A, come back to Texas. You know you love it here!
| Posted 17 years agoWe need to fix the whole friendship system. Because the current one sucks.
| Posted 17 years agoI need to subscribe to a friendship system in L.A.
stat.
| Posted 17 years agoFunny, Scott and I are going through the exact same thing. The majority of our close-knit group of friends were older than us by a few years; and now they’re all getting married and having bebes. We are SO NOT on that page right now, and don’t plan to be anytime soon. Sucks when circumstances change.
| Posted 17 years ago