You people have friends?
My wife and I are some weird combination of this. She’s a local doctor and we routinely see people that recognize her that she can’t acknowledge first.
After volunteering multiple days in the lunchroom at my kid’s elementary school last year and working in a high school media center this year I’m a bit “that friend” but in a more creepy way because I know everyone’s kids, but not their parents.
When I meet my kids friend’s parents I usually refer to them as eg Hey Joe’s Dad, how you doin’.
I’m “that friend” in this meme
Me too, and it’s pretty wild. I live in a small town and have had enough odd jobs/encounters while being friendly that i seemingly know everyone. It’s also a bit of a positive feedback loop as well, because i know enough people that they keep introducing me to new people, who then introduce me to even more people.
I’m also this guy. I’ve connected some wild stories too LoL. Two girls who looked eerily alike but didn’t know each other… same Dad LoL, he bailed on the first girl when she was 6.
The other one that blows my mind is two guys who share the same kinda unique name. One id been friends with my whole life the other about 5 years. The more I got to know the new guy the more I HAD to get him together with the old friend. Turns out they’re now great friends and they now get together more without me than with me LoL. Their similarities are so creepy. Same unique first name. Same middle name! Sons have the same birthday, one year apart. Before they met, they lived within walking distance of each other. There’s more. It’s a total glitch in the matrix.
Just treat people well and fun stuff can happen.
Yes but both of them are me and the difference is the presence or absence of MDMA
That’s my wife. Leaving parties is the worst because I love the ol’ Irish Goodbye and she needs to say bye to EVERYONE at the party that she talked to.
I’m fairly well connected and that’s exactly why I use the Irish goodbye LoL. It used to take me half of the party to say hello, then I’d be saying goodbye straight afterwards it felt. I realized that as long as I connected with you at the event you don’t remember if It was coming or going so I just started leaving. It was so liberating.
My friend says I act like this.
I read a book called “how to win friends and influence people” and it completely changed my life for the better once I started taking the book literally.
Everybody tends to be selfish and think of themselves (not in a bad way). If you play into this and learn what people are interested in, you instantly become interesting to that person.
“Hey Ricky, how’s your hot wheels collection! Get any new classics?” True story, different name. That’s just the butcher at the grocery store I frequent. He’ll tell me all about his latest hot wheels collection, and then I get a discount, we both win. I’ve made a friend, and influenced him to give me a deal.
But how do you even know about his Hot wheels collection? It’s not like I ask all store clerks for their hobby.
Ask them about themselves, i guess. Im sure it’s in the book somewhere.
I suppose you can try and start a conversation by talking about yourself, or “a friend”, then using that as a hook for asking about them. Or use a low hanging fruit, like a popular sport (something weird in USA, soccer everywhere else):
“Damn, my friend can’t stop talking about his team, do you follow sports?” On a no, it’s a perfect opportunity to comment something like “Yeah, better stuff to spend your time with, right?”
Friend? What is this friend thing?
This is invariably the case when a person deep in the Introvert side of the scale goes out with a friend far into the opposite side of the same scale, (i.e. an Extrovert).
On the other hand there are situations were it’s the Extrovert friend that feels awkward and the Introvert one that is at home and energized, normally anything to do with figuring out and solving really complex problems and situations rather that casual socializing.
It’s absolutelly normal to feel comparativelly inept next to an expert doing their thing in their expert domain.
My mom. Grew up in a small town of about 25,000 and my mom was the front office manager for the local orthodontist. Orthodontist was great and even folks from “the big city” went to her. My whole life was going out with my mom and running into people who wanted to talk
I live in a small town with about 600 people, so “A small town of about 25,000” was crazy to read.
According to the example on this Wikipedia page you live in a village not a town. Just thought it was neat.
It was originally classified as a town, because there used to be a lot more people not long ago. Many people left because there wasn’t enough work, and it’s not a very opportunistic place for kids.
I’m kind of that friend because I’ve had a chance to meet and work with a lot of famous people without ever being especially famous or successful myself… but I do have a lot of stories. Both professional and incidental.
For example-
My dog played with Eric Idle’s dog in a park one day. We were the only two people there. We talked about dogs.
You
and your friendjust casually met one of my favorite comedians/actors… Some people have all the luck. Well, at least this comment places me at (a very tenuous) two degrees of separation :)Any noteworthy encounters with Cleese?
Edit because I misread
Cleese is kind of a jerk sadly. I can’t say I was personally introduced but I was in his vicinity for a spell in a professional capacity. I love his comedic persona but I can’t say I would want to have an extended discussion with him… He’s very… Acerbic in the not pleasant kind of way.
No