Coffee House: City Screen, Coney Street, York
Drink: Latte
Cake: Toffee Cake
Friends. Bit of an odd concept when you think about it. We divide people up that we meet/work with/live with etc into various categories, one being 'a friend'. I don't think we really rationalise the process itself. We don't go through a pros and cons analysis or keep a tally of the points as this person makes the breakthrough from acquaintance to friend. It's more akin to when you fall in love. All of a sudden this person is a friend. And sometimes the reverse happens and they aren't anymore.
Some friends (usually quite a small number) are people that you've know since childhood/adolescence and there's a strong bond built up over the years through shared experiences, good and bad, along with a shared memory. Whenever I meet up with my 'bezzie mate' Steve (Best Mate being a subset of the classification Friend) we're instantly back to being 17. The same stupid sense of humour kicks in and the time together is spent giggling at things from the past and present.
But the majority are relatively light on shared experiences. You just feel comfortable with the person and decide to open up the door and let them in. Did you see the thing going round on Facebook which described introverts and extroverts? Extroverts need other people to feed off and introverts feed off themselves (I've simplified this definition somewhat) The visual aid showed someone in a hamster ball. So when we become friends either as an introvert and/or with an introvert the hamster ball is opened for a while (Don't know the mechanism with extroverts. Maybe they don't need friends as they can engage with anyone at anytime anyway).
In my case this is a very rare occurrence. I don't actively avoid friendship but don't go out of my way to find it. It doesn't help that my 'resting' face appears pretty miserable. I'm not usually but it can give that impression and presumably puts off people getting too close for fear I'll growl or bite. People with happy faces on the other hand are very attractive (not necessarily in a sexual way).
A bit of a tangent here. We are very visual beings and make all sorts of judgments of each other based on what we see, then on what we hear. No doubt there's a deep routed inbuilt reason for this dating back to when we needed to ensure the survival of our family group/tribe. Now it tends to limit who we interact with. We instinctively mix with other people who look the same - their clothes, hairstyles, even the colour of their skin. We tend to avoid 'ugly' people without knowing what type of people they are in the inside. The process of avoiding them builds up prejudice both ways and perpetuates the clinging to type.
The funny thing with me has been that people who don't know me and just see the outside think that I'm some hippy, free thinking, tree hugging, druggy alcoholic. I may have been some/all of these at various points in my life but not now. It's helpful though, giving that impression, as it keeps away the boring bastards. 'I'd rather stay here with all the madmen than perish with the sad men roaming free'
