Friendship

So.  I am a quiet person.  Quit laughing, I am!   A silent person, introspective and not shy, just reserved and stand-offish.   I'll never get this done, if you don't stop laughing.   :)

So being introverted and going my own way most of the time, I prefer to make a few good friends, rather than know a lot of people superficially.   If I don't trust you, and I trust almost no one, then I can't relax around you and I come home more exhausted from the effort than if I had stayed home alone.

So most of my life, I've had a series of one really good friend or two at the most.   When I was very young, I didn't have any, but that would change.

In elementary school, I was an odd duck on so many levels.   Our school was tiny.  One small class per grade.  When it first got started, there was even a grade with no kids in it.  Because we didn't go to church, and because I didn't say Grace before lunch like the little pious girls did, and because I wore pinafores with a sash in the back for quite a few years, and no one else did,  and for a few dozen other reasons, like living in the country and not playing in town after school and some other stuff I ain't gonna talk about,  I didn't have a naturally occurring  like minded friend in the early grades.  My mom didn't mix with the other moms.  We kept to ourselves. 

Oh and I was pulled out of class on occasions and tested special, because of some screening that had been done in First Grade and again in Third.   They made special accommodations to give me books to read from the upper grades collections and when I had read all the books in the school, they brought me in special ones from the library in town. So there was lots of whispers when I got extra attention from the staff and strangers coming in.

Our gradeschool was taking part in special ongoing psychological projects as part of  a government program based at the Air Force base near our village.   One of the things they did was a social web.

You had to answer some questions about who you would tell your troubles to,  who do you play with at recess, who do you dislike in your class.   I was a smart cookie and did some quick checking around and realized that no one had written my name down on any of the positive friendship questions.

The researcher drew a quick diagram of what  a social web looked like.  It had lines going from person to person with arrows.  Some were only one way arrows and some were two way arrows.  And then there was the cheese that stood alone, as Reese likes to call it.    I had failed the test!

So they were coming back in a bit to see if relationships had changed over time.  I got to work and went through my class to see if I could find a girl who I could connect to.  I thought about the social ties, and tried to imagine how people become friends by shared experiences, and proximity to each other.  I took each girl into consideration and mapped out the social web for myself on a piece of paper.  I was looking for a loose girl I could tap into.

Etta May!  She lived on a farm.   She was nice.   She was best friends with Pamela who wasn't very nice to her some of the time.   She played jacks with me.   I started to court her.  I asked her questions.  I listened to her to complain about her brothers being mean to her.  I gave her my chocolate milk at milk time.  I lent her my best eraser.   Pretty soon, some of the time she would seek me out.   Pamela wasn't happy, but it was mostly when Pam was sick or busy with something else.  She was careful and I was not demanding.

Three months went by.  The same guy shows up.  I fill out my questionaire and then afterwards I ask Etta who she had put.  She whispers that she had put ME down as the one classmate who she could talk to the best. 

YES!    Success!