Rolling with a posse
In direct contrast to my post from last week, last night, I felt the distinct longing for a posse to roll with. *cough*
Seppo and I folded laundry while watching clips from the SickStep dvd *cough* that I picked up a few weeks ago. There are some really awesome dance battles *cough* [I must be coming down with something, what with all the coughing] along with footage of the members of SickStep just hanging out and goofing off.
When I was in high school, I had three distinct groups of friends: my lunch time friends who consisted of people from same classes/neighborhood/old grade school, my orchestra nerds friends (I wasn’t in the orchestra, but everyone else was), and my church youth group friends. Each group had a different dynamic, but was 100% comfortable and fun to hang out with. I got something truly valuable from each group.
In some way, I feel like I’m lacking that now. Being a working adult doesn’t really give you a posse to work with. I have great, close friends, and other people who are becoming closer friends but they are not a coherent posse that can gel together.
Anyway, Seppo and I watched the clips and felt the longing for a bunch of people with similar interests to hang out with on a regular basis. One of the best parts of being this age is that our friends are so diverse and interested in so many different things, but that also means that they may not have much in common with each other. I’m sure Seppo misses the feeling of closeness that his swim team had, much as I miss my small groups of friends that really connected on multiple levels.
We often feel that when we want to have an event, we have to decide if it’s going to be a “college friends” event, a “coworkers event”, a “old friends event”, or something else entirely, but it’s hard to mix the groups, not because people don’t get along, but because the dynamic is so off when the groups are together.
Yeah, but my friends, by and large, are cliquish – that’s not to say that they’re snobbish, just that they socialize mostly within their own group. When I go somewhere, I’m certainly not a social butterfly. I’ll stick with the people I’m comfortable with, and not generally make much of an effort to talk to someone new.
*Most* of the people I know are similar in that fashion, and as a result, when I invite say, three distinct groups over, the only common thing is that I’m running around to each of ’em, trying to at least for some sort of coherent reason why they’re all here.
You don’t have to draw the line between those groups.
I think we don’t have to, but we want to, because it’s more fun that way. It’s hard to explain. With the groups separated out, we don’t have to all resort to the 1 common interest among the large group. Smaller groups are likely to have more common interests, so instead of being tied to one middle-of-the-road topic, we can veer into more specific things.
Perhaps this is just an extension of why I like one-on-one interactions better, since I’m back to espousing smaller groups separately rather than one big group.
I strayed from it entirely in the context of my blog entry, but the thing I miss is a tightly-knit group with a common active or philosophical purpose. I bet you get that kind of interaction I miss in your school friends and your soccer friends. Lucky bastard! 😀
I do sometimes miss the dozen-or-so person posse I had in Boston for the three years or so immediately following graduation. That was a ton of fun.
I’m with Joe, I try to mix my groups of friends as much as possible. The results aren’t always stellar, and I do have some friends that don’t mix well with others, but by and large it works out great.
Speaking of which, I should have another little gathering at some point.
What, no mention of teh TGF posse? “For shame!” /Abraham Simpson
h: Speaking of which, I should have another little gathering at some point.
Yes!
andre: What, no mention of teh TGF posse?
That’s because I hardly see them in real life! 😀 Also, most of the people I do see from TGF actually fall into other primary groups. But you are right; I do really enjoy the daily interaction I get with TGF’s group of awesome folks. Now, if only I could get my older friends to have separate message boards like that.
This actually reminds me of a conversation I was having earlier with Klay – that it’s really hard to get people together to do anything for an extended period of time anymore. We were talking about geeky pursuits, like forming a “clan” for a game – that we can’t even get people on TGF to play a single game in a coordinated fashion, simply because everyone’s lives are so busy.
Which then reminded me that at this point, it’ll be very rare, if ever, that we say, get away from “life” with some friends for a week or two. Whereas in Europe, it’s my understanding that families often vacation together, because they have enough vacation that they can actually allot some time to friends, instead of just visiting parents/kids/siblings on the limited time we have.
Yeah, what Seppo said: the friends are most definitely not snobbish but mostly enjoy mingling in their own groups.
You take that back right now! I’ve worked long and hard on my snobbery and I will not have you tossing it by the wayside with some diplomatic description. =D
These days I’m amazed I can organize a group of friends one weekend a year for a camping trip, forget about trying to take a real vacation together. And yet, one of my funnest “vacations” was when most of my family and friends was around (it also helped that we were all in Maui for our wedding).
You don’t have to draw the line between those groups. I try to mix them together, that’s one of the nice things about your friends. Usually they start with one thing in common, their friendship with you, but when I’ve mixed my groups, they usually mix well. Stirred, not shaken.