I was speaking with my mom the other night and she asked me if I have made any friends yet. No, I haven’t. She seemed worried (or was maybe just pausing to think what a loser she raised) – and said, “Why not?” Hmmm. So many ways to answer that.
My first reply was, “Mom. It’s not like I can run out the front door, hop on my bike and ride up and down the street until the other moms come out to play and then ask them if they want to be my friend.” We laughed. I mostly laughed because I pictured my 36-year-old self doing this. HAHAHA. It’s a good visual. Especially the parts where I have to pedal up the slight hill on my street or brake going back down the hill so I don’t crash into the wall at the bottom of the street. (Really though, who am I kidding? Bike riding was never my thing – so this is a funny visual no matter what my age is.)
She then said, “Can’t you go over to their houses?” To which I replied, “Sure. I will just pop over, knock and ask if they mind if I hang out with them for a while. That wouldn’t be creepy. They’d definitely want to be friends with me. I can see it now – the husband calls out – who was that, honey? And my new “friend” answers, oh, just that weird new girl across the street asking if we could hang out.” Again, picturing myself “hanging out” as a 36-year old – hilarious. In this scenario, I was draped on a couch cracking gum while watching Sex & The City re-runs with my new friend. You know, like I was 13 and instead of Growing Pains or The Cosby Show, I just inserted a more adult-themed show.
We were hysterical laughing by this point. We then started mapping out plans to make me some friends. Old fashioned: I could pretend to be baking and need to borrow a cup of sugar, and then cross my fingers as I hoped the sugar sharer wanted to be my friend. Sit out front on nice days and pounce on any poor neighbor that wandered into the street: “Hey there! Want to be friends?” Just start introducing myself like, “Hi, I’m Bridget. I need friends. You in?”
Keep your fingers crossed that friendships develop naturally as we head into the nice-weather months. I also have some hope as Gavin transitions to school in September – that becomes an automatic ‘in’ to the community. Really though – just hope that I don’t have to try any of the scenarios outlined above. (Because chances are pretty good, I will skip it and just adopt cats and / or take up knitting. I will keep you posted if a rocking chair is a good gift idea for Christmas this year…)