Sunday, September 02, 2007

Friends: how many of us steal them?

Finally! After a year and a half of saying that I take requests, (hey everybody, I take requests for Eighty-Four Glyde columns!) somebody actually requested a topic for me to write about. So thanks Ashley, for giving your two cents. It’s about damn time!
Friend thieves. They’re out there. They could be sitting next to you. You could be one yourself. What’s a friend thief? Simple. Say you have a friend, (you do have a friend don’t you? If you don’t you should probably stop reading this now, it’s all about people who get along with other people and you’ll just depress the shit out of yourself if you continue) and your friend introduces you to a friend of his (you know, one day, you go over to your friend’s house to “watch the game” or perhaps play some “five card stud” or whatever the hell it is friends do, my lonely pathetic self has no idea) and the next thing you know you’re hanging out with your friend’s friend without your friend even being around! (did I write the word friend enough in that last sentence?) You have become a friend thief.
You might have stolen a friend before. You might have been the friend who was stolen. Think about it. Kinda creepy, isn’t it? Imagine people battling over who will get to hang out with you. It’s a self-esteem booster, that’s for sure. It’s like being Helen of Troy, I guess, only with less gay eye-candy.
Allow me to wander the corridors of my ever-shrinking memory (ah, memory. But that’s a topic for another time) for friend-thievery from my past. Hmmmm. Let……….me……thin……….k. (Don’t you love stream of consciousness thinking/writing? This is all in real time!) I got it!
Jay. The guy who filled in for me a few weeks ago with his rambling and oddly-worded Rant Stew. He’s constantly getting stolen from friends. See if you can follow me here: For a time my friend Lea had a boyfriend, (“for a time” is probably not the best choice of words, but I’m too lazy to think of anything else) her boyfriend had a friend named Jay. Although Lea broke up with the guy, she still hangs out with his friend Jay. Weird, I know. Then, when I came back from Iraq, Lea introduced me to Jay. I found him to be a jovial fellow and decided to include him in my wacky misadventures.
That makes Jay a twice-stolen friend. First he was stolen by Lea, then again by me. He gets stolen more than the innocence of young boys who hang out with Catholic priests, (not sure that makes sense, but I’ve always wanted to do a Catholic priest joke.) I wanted to get his opinion on this matter, just to see how he feels, so I asked him. The conversation went something like this:

Joshua: Hey Jay, why are people constantly stealing you as a friend? How does it make you feel to know that at any given moment somebody could snatch you up?
Jay: Huh?
Joshua: Yes, yes, I see. It all makes perfect sense now.

In my humble, yet extremely intelligent opinion, friend thieves are lazy. They don’t want to take the time to go out, socialize and meet new people. They’re perfectly comfortable with a “used” friend. Sloppy seconds, as it were. And that’s fine because that’s basically how America works. One day there will be friend stores where you can go shop for a shrink-wrapped friend from among hundreds, all lined up on shelves and each with their own cabbage patch baby-styled papers of authenticity and lineage. Won’t that be fun? No, it won’t. It’ll be a hassle. Not even sure it’s practical. I think I’m going on an odd tangent here. I’m digressing at an alarming rate!
Anyway, friend thieves are everywhere. Friend thievery is quite rampant. And you know what? It’s not a bad thing. Stealing friends is the best way to keep them in circulation, kind of like two dollar bills, or those useless Sacagawea dollars. To keep the American friend economy strong, friends need to be stolen, traded and spent.
So do your part people! Go out there and steal somebody’s friend today! It’s not that hard and it’s fun for the whole family, (except for the friend who’s being excluded I guess) and can be done in 30 minutes a day, three days a week*.
So thanks, little sister, for today’s discussion topic. Join us next week when I address the socio-economic status of small, badly-named Middle Eastern countries, (including ones with “stan” in the name!) And now, because I can’t think of a good way to end this disjointed and rambling entry, I think I’m just going to stop…….right…………………………………………………………………………now.


*results may vary.

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