Ain't So Easy

There are a lot of things in life that we think are easy.. but end up not being so!

The other day we got invited to a kids birthday party for my sons classmate. The normal stuff, with getting the kiddos together and doing the good thing of celebrating a birthday. Those are the real special moments because it just helps them be kids for longer, when they can appreciate the small things in life apart from all the nasty crap that's going on.

When we were there, we struck up some conversations and ended up having some good chats with the other parents. For the most part it was the dads that were the chatty ones, with the moms largely saying hello and that's it. I don't mind, as often times I would rather chat with the dads anyway even if the mom is very attractive.

It was nice because with the good banter, the normal stuff comes up. Hobbies, job and all that. I ended up potentially making a dad friend, and damn if I wasn't excited about that LOL. I thought it would be easy making parent friends.. but it turns out it's actually not?! What the fuck dude?!

When my wife was pregnant, we were doing all kinds of planning and stuff. As a parent, you know a lot of the plans go out the window once the kid comes home but we were doing future planning. We don't have the most friends in the world which is okay, but we knew that we would try to make friends with the parents that we met along the way. Fast forward several years at this point and we've made.. not a lot LOL. That is not what we were thinking would happen!

I wonder if it has anything to do with the increasingly digital world we are living in, that parents aren't connected to the physical world the same as kids are. I get that the generations that are having kids are also those same generations that were playing games a lot, so it makes sense. We spend more of our time online than we do anything else, which is a good thing in some ways but also bad in others. It's bad in that it's difficult to make social connections with people when we are so disconnected physically!

The good thing is that I ended up bonding a little bit with the dude because I love to go fishing, and I take my son fishing quite a bit. We were talking about fishing and he was saying that he's been dying to go but he can't find anyone to go with, or get the process right for what to get and all that. Thankfully I've been doing that for years at this point, so I'm pretty good at it. I hope when the time comes, with the thawing of the frigid temperatures and us getting out to the fishing spots again, that he was serious about going and I can definitely help him out.

When I look back on thinking I would have dozens of parent friends by this time, and compare that to today, how wrong I was in that notion! I think that's pretty sad in so many ways, because we are incredibly social creatures. We thrive in social environments, for the most part, and the fact that most people aren't social is really challenging for the long-term outlook of us as a species. I guess the eugenicists are pretty happy about that one!

What about you, do you find it difficult to find and make friends as adults? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments!