Friday, February 15, 2008

friends in small places

It happens about once a year: circumstance has thrown a new person in your path and suddenly you see them everyday. And you are addicted. You can't get enough of the laughs and the new stories. You get consumed by the other person and you regret the moments when you have to sleep because there's still so much more to say. These are the friendships that flare up and don't do too well over email and the phone. They need the intensive German class, the menial labor summer job, the six hour train rides during a vacation, the research gig where there's not much to research. You have this vague sensation that if you could just get back to a place where you are kind of trapped together on a daily basis, you could pick up where you left off, so there's no need for the phone calls, the email, even the casual cups of coffee or the brief visits passing through town. There's a lot of talk about love at first sight, but do we have words for best friends at first sight? It's the closest you're gonna get to the childhood friendship - the ones forged in homerooms and geometry classes, the ones where you have nothing to lose by cutting to the chase.

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