My problem: I'm a 34-year-old single woman, and all my friends just moved
out of town. Do you know how I can meet some new ones?
A Friend in Need of a Friend Indeed
Friend: Funny you should ask — not funny ha-ha but funny boo-hoo. For I myself am a little low on friends these days. When I was young — this would be back in the Pleistocene era — I used to do this thing on New Year's Eve where I would tally up all the new friends I'd made that year. And the number was always higher than five and sometimes higher than 10. In other words, I was a veritable friendship magnet. People were attracted to me and gathered around me like iron filings. Then I entered my 30s, and I was lucky if I met two new people a year. Then I entered my forties, and I was lucky if I met one person every five years. Now I'm 46 and seem to have lost my magnetic personality altogether. What gives?
What gives is that I got older, despite my determined efforts to stay young forever. And there simply aren't that many people around who are 1) in their 40s, 2) have free time and 3) are willing to stay up all night talking about my various pet peeves. Not that I would reject people in their 30s, but they seem to have even less free time and be even more unwilling to stay up all night talking about my various pet peeves. As for people in their 20s, I've found it just doesn't work out. They have tons of free time, but they're absolutely, positively unwilling to stay up all night talking about my various pet peeves.
I will now reveal why I — and perhaps you — have so few friends. Yes, yours moved out of town, but what really happened is that you failed to replace them before they were gone. You're no longer replenishing your supply. And do you want to know why? In a word: families. Most people your age have started families or are about to start families or are about to start starting families. By age 40, all but a select few of them will be surrounded by these squalling blobs of flesh that some people prefer to call children. Now, I like children as much as the next person, especially if the next person is W.C. Fields. But they do have this way of killing adult friendships. They do it by monopolizing their parents' time.
And their parents' love. And their parents' attention. And their parents' ability to stay up all night talking about my various pet peeves. Just try getting a parent to stay up past, oh, 9 o'clock. The only way you can do it is if you agree to talk about...their children! Which happens to be one of my pet peeves!!! There are some rare exceptions — all my married-with-children friends, for example. They're all asleep right now, since I'm writing this after 9 o'clock, but they know who they are, and they know how I feel about them. Which brings up my main point: Hold on to the friends you do have for dear life. Hold on so tight that their faces turn red and their eyes bulge and little bubbles pour out the sides of their mouths.
Alas, you didn't hold on, Friend. As for how to meet new friends, here's
what I recommend: 1) Join a church, club or cult, 2) change jobs, 3) change
jobs again, 4) introduce yourself to perfect strangers on the street. A warning:
Some of the perfect strangers will look at you like you've just belched during
lunch. WHICH HAPPENS TO BE ONE OF MY PET PEEVES!
To pet my peeve, write to: MR. RIGHT, ISTHMUS, 101 KING ST., MADISON, WI 53703.
OR CALL 251-5627. OR FAX 251-2165. OR E-MAIL MRRIGHT@ISTHMUS.COM.