Making friends is an important thing to learn how to do if you intend to survive in any sort of human society, really. If you have no friends, it is more likely that you will be unhappy, unhealthy, and possibly picked off for food, depending on where you live.
If you were forced to move around a lot as a child, making friends becomes less of a necessity and more of an art-form. It's less about the results (QUALITY of friends), and more about process (HOW you managed to make them like you).
Here are some handy tips for making friends, collected from someone who has moved 9 times in 16 years (not often by defence force standards, really, but enough. ENOUGH! Please, I don't want to go again...please don't make me go...please...*sobbing*)
1. Get cool stuff.
Admit it, you're always a little nicer to the people with pools or xboxes or drum kits or puppies. If you have cool stuff, people will want to know you.
Cool stuff in public is good too. I knew a guy who walked around the place wearing his guitar. I'm serious. Airports, shopping centres, funeral homes, you name it, he was strolling about with a guitar slung over one shoulder, winking at people. HE has lots of friends now, or so I'm told. Sometimes using your cool stuff in public can lose you some friends too...
Cool stuff doesn't even have to be a guitar, or something traditionally cool, depending on the type of friends you want.
Guys in my physics class attract friends with Rubik's Cubes. I spent today walking around with a $2.50 mechanical colour change ball, tossing it haphazardly and drawing the attention of every physics nut in the area. In the science shop, people actually came up and SPOKE to me about it. FRIEND MAKING MATERIAL!
2. Learn some jokes, man.
I made at least one friend by telling a really excellent joke. It was a REALLY excellent joke about a frog, and he does some crazy things and hilarity ensues. I mean, it's a really, really good joke. Also, quoting from such television shows as Scrubs, Friends, Seinfeld, Black Books, and movies like Napoleon Dynamite are also surefire friend-makers. "Idiot!"
3. Talk to people online.
Let's face it, it can be hard to make friends in real life. MSN or any sort of IM is really the key to friend-making. You have time to think about what you're saying before you say it, eliminating one of the most common friend-making-killers, stumbling over words or saying really, freaking stupid things. It also allows time to research.
Cool Fellow says:
"Hey, have you heard the new RAASVH by ABTDE.BC!, or are you totally lame and ignorant of the world of music?"
(Google search, pause disguised as having multiple conversations with your multitude of friends...)
Hopeful Friend says:
"Hey yeah, it's a very good song full of clever hooks and insightful lyrics. We share similar interests and should become friends!"
See? Flawless.
4. Learn to tumble semi-precious stones.
I don't know. I'd like a friend who could do that.
5. Listen and nod.
This works especially well with the sensitive types.
6. Start a blog.
Yet to see if this one works.
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2 comments:
I agree.
The joke about the frog might actually be able to kill people from great distances, which isn't necessessessessessarily* a good thing, but still, you do have an excellent sense of humour.
Oh, and coincidentally: have you heard the new Recording Album Awesome Spider Viral Heroes by All Because The Dorks Eat. Boring Crap!, or are you totally ignorant of the world of music?
I can create Iron Pyrite using a pencil and my keen intellect. Maybe we should go out sometime.
Oh, and you have a lovely smile, a fantastic personality and you are the coolest person in the universe. That's how you make friends, silly. :)
* Oh, I didn't know how many S's were necceefwodfhWOWHgoWHHOIHAHDOary in... "that word". Sorry.
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