The Process
Most of my life I have been able to meet people with no problem at all. Nobody is a stranger to me unless they are really strange and make the hair on my neck stand up for a bad reason. Everybody has potential to be less than a nerd or more than a super hero, the only way to find that out is… get to know him or her.
I have thousands of acquaintances in my life, many people I hold dear and a hand full of friends that I trust my life with. When you add family and musical people that share a love and a passion, they all get filtered into those areas, some of them doubling up in several categories in my mind.
The last thing I want to do today is write a long drug out scenario of "friendships". That has been talked about and preached about and blogged to death. I am guilty of it in past postings. It usually gets written as a venting process or to clear something up. That is not my point today.
Over the past years, I have had the opportunity to meet and spend time with some new people on a casual level. Prolly never gonna share my most intimate thoughts with them, probably going to listen to their problems and be a shoulder at times, but they will come and go out of my life, will be here only a short time. Yeah, I get attached easy, but I didn't give them any vows of dedication for life here. We laugh a lot, we share moments and events that will be forgotten over time unless someone reminds us of them.
I'll use a metaphor of calling them Styrofoam friendships, they are great for right now, they are happy working and when you no longer have it, you don't miss it much.
I am really drawn to my glass cup friendships for life. They are the ones that I am not dwelling on today, but to compare the Styrofoam ones to it, the Styrofoam are here today and gone tomorrow, and not many tears are shed. The glass cup ones however…..
They are cherished for life; they are fragile but much preferred for me. If you crack or break your cup, it doesn't mean it cannot be glued or repaired, but you will always see the scar. That is a true friendship. If it shatters to pieces, it means someone dropped it forever. Your glass cup friends are not always there from day to day, you have to expand your world and let others in to pass the time or maybe you were sent to them for a reason that you have no idea about.
When getting to know these new Styrofoam friends, sometimes I grow tired of the process. I know I know, it means I am getting older. My point is, I have run this tape so many times before, you can almost fill in the answers without the other person there to ask them. So many people have similar characteristics to others that you already know.
I must say here that I am generalizing because I do know that everyone is just a bit different and right when you think you know someone, they will come out of left field and freak you out. Most Styrofoam friends are predictable. Don't get me wrong here, I am not be-littleing anyone by the name here, it is just a clarification of status.
I enjoying new temporary friends. They are not around me enough to piss me off or to have them get pissed off at me for any reasons. There is time to laugh at life and everyone is just there for the laughs, the money or time spent. Once in a while you see a bit of unexpected chemistry in someone that draws you to them just a bit more than some of the others. I am not paying much attention to chemistry these days, every time I do it turns my world upside down from the inside out, puts me on a roller coaster ride that I never bought tickets for. So having a laugh again with temporary foam friends is pretty all right at times. Not that I ever stopped laughing for long, but sometimes laughter has a bitter taste to it when things are unsettled. Temporary friends don't have to know your past or current situation to have a laugh with you. If it is fun or funny, you laugh. It doesn't matter that you are broke, rich, happy, depressed, married, single, a garbage man or a lawyer, they are all there to intermingle.
Now you can take the same attitude in a negative vain and say… they are all idiots wasting my time, or you can see it for what it is….. a way to make someone's day or have them make yours. With no strings, no sadness.
Larry once told me (Larry being a non Styrofoam dear friend in the glass cup section of my mind, with some glue on the cup lol)…. Anyway, he once told me that I could have fun in a toilet full of hornets. I laughed at that, but sometimes I think he was right. I consider that a compliment these days. I find that when I don't loose patience with the process of getting to know the knew foam people……. Each one is a bit different than what we assume they are. They are NOT all like someone we have met before. Similar does not mean exact. Always room for surprise.
I don't have enough time or gas money to be around the people I have as life long friends already. So phone calls, emails and just the mental "you know" will have to do as time goes speeding past us. In the mean time, I hope my glass cup friends have a similar situation where they are meeting happy, fun people to pass the time with,…. Until we meet again. Remember the ones you know and love, & don't forget to laugh & enjoy the ones you are with.
Tune it or die. 
