The Big 5 and why I dislike Facebook (Warning: this is reaaally long).

Yesterday at lunch, my friend Megan and I were discussing friendships. With my birthday, she told me that we had now been friends for half of our lives, which brought us onto the topic of long lasting friendships. I kept thinking about it and, in 27 years of life, I have 5 people (outside of family) that I would do nearly anything for. We'll call them the 'Big 5'. At first, I thought that was kind of sad to have only 5 really close friends in over a quarter of a century's time, but I think the word 'friend' is so subjective that it sort of doesn't mean much without some explanation. I use friend pretty loosely to describe people that I don't know that well. But I also use the word to describe the Big 5. I have more friends than the Big 5, but they're more like 'people I'm getting to know better', 'people I see occasionally but don't really talk to about much in particular', 'people I have a) or b) in common with but that's as far as the friendship goes', etc. The Big 5 are different. Each of those five are the sorts of friendships that are totally secure and almost effortless in maintenance. None of them live in the same place as I do, so we don't constantly hang out. Time passes between conversations and even more time between actual visits, but as soon as the conversation starts or the visit begins, it's like no time has passed at all. I think everyone has at least someone that they have this kind of friendship with. If not, I hope you find one, because it's freaking awesome.

Some people might argue that social networking allows these long-distance/long-standing friendships to happen more often now than maybe it used to because you can stay connected more easily? I don't think so. I would argue that social networking makes people much lazier in their relationships than they ever used to be. The Big 5 and I don't use the social networking sites to stay connected. We are all on Facebook (although some of us don't use it), and only two of us actually use Twitter to exchange little messages now and again. The problem with social networking sites is that people no longer talk to each other. They sit alone with their computer and stalk websites to find out what the people they used to hang out with are up to now. And while they might now and again have a conversation or actually be in the physical presence of the person, it's a much more lazy and dis-connected sort of friendship than I think things used to be. That's one of the reasons I'm tired of things like Facebook; I don't think it's helpful in any real way at keeping friendships going. It keeps people aware that other people are still on the planet, but aside from that, what's the use? You still don't really know what's going on with the person. And a lot of the time, people have others as friends that they probably wouldn't hang out with even if they had the chance. Maybe you went to school together or worked together or played pee-wee soccer together, and you didn't hang out then, but by God, you're friends on Facebook now and you know when the person gets married or has a kid or what they're making for dinner. But really: If you didn't hang out with them at the time, and you never speak to them, it begs the question: Why do you care what they're eating for dinner? For something known by the term social networking, I see very little actual socializing going on.

I got way off on a tangent there. That was not the point of my posting tonight. Megan did a really sweet bday tribute blog post about our friendship over on her Mrs. Tgo blog and I was really touched and thought that was a great idea. Since I was already still thinking about these sorts of things, I thought I'd introduce my blog to my Big 5 through brief introductions. Now, frankly, you can look at the followers thingy and pretty much see who they are (minus 1 who doesn't do this kind of thing at all), but this is how I roll:

Oksana (Oxi) - She was my college roommate for 3 years. We met when I got seriously angry and moved out of the dorms during the first week of my sophomore year of college. She got seriously angry and moved out of an apartment at about the same time (her first year of graduate school and newly arrived in America from Ukraine). And boom: there we were. Two strangers from different countries roomie-matched by a somewhat dysfunctional apartment manager. We were very different but similar in all the ways that make it easy to live with another person: mutual respect, curiosity about the other person's thoughts and interests, patience, the ability to stay up and listen/talk for hours about nothing and anything, and neither of us assumed that the other would clean up our mess. Over the three years, she became like a member of the family and spent holidays at home with my parents and me, and when my mom died, she was a gigantic support because she'd lost her mom at a young age. She is a math genius (not kidding) who makes me believe in romantic soulmates because if anybody somehow managed to find the perfect match, it was she in an Italian named Damiano. They are wonderful and I miss them, especially now that I am back at Mizzou and she is not. She makes an impression on people and they can't help but like her. She is someone who strongly believes in many things and I admire that about her. She has her convictions and stands by them no matter what, but is never condescending or arrogant. She is a very kind soul and I am amazed that such a dysfunctional apartment manager could have done such a good job at roommate matching.


Megan - As the one who lives closest to me (a mere 30 miles), she and I get to hang out frequently and as such, she has heard my gripes about various things over the last couple of years. She is a good listener and I don't feel weird griping to her about things that I might consider kind of trivial if I were talking to someone else. She listens no matter how dumb the things you say might sound. She is not afraid to be goony with me, and as two people who became friends at the beginning of our teenage years, having someone to do the goony things with has been a lifesaver. She will wear a dumb fisherman's hat and wander around in public with me. She understands the picky eater philosophy. If you can imagine two 13-year-old girls in glasses and matching P.E. uniforms (Go Patriots) playing ping pong on the stage of a middle school gymnasium shouting out letters as they hit the ball (letters that spelled out the names of teen celebrities we adored), you have an idea of the kind of gooniness that she doesn't mind participating in. She has a quiet strength that seems to make sense out of chaos. She is a planner and I wish I was half as detail-oriented as she. She's very creative and has a special talent for making things on her sewing machine. And she FINALLY is into The Big Bang Theory, so I have someone to recap and laugh about the show with every week.

Anela - We met in Waco, Texas, and she is my newest close friend, but she is one of the few people I can actually remember the moment we became friends. The first weeks in Texas were pretty lonely and I remember deciding to go to a party that one of the older graduate students was having. Anela also wanted to go, so we drove together. We hadn't really talked much but both were kind of wanting to make sure we tried to make friends in this new situation. And before we even got to the apartment where the party was, Anela had already asked me to be her roommate the next year. I remember being very surprised and at how trusting and upfront she was. As it turned out, I wouldn't return to Texas after that year, but she is the one person from that very short period of my life that I still consider a real friend. She is early to things, where I am almost always late, but we have many things in common: she is a fellow history buff and misses the days of getting actual letters in your real mailbox by your house (so we send real live letters to each other, and it totally brightens my day when I get one); we're museumphiles, and she loves BBC dramas and sitcoms as much as I (or, maybe even more). She's the one who understands me when I discuss Lionel and Jean as if I actually know them. She will go to Jimmy Buffett concerts and enjoy the drunken crazies as much as me, all the while shouting "Fins to the Left!!" and laughing when the drunk man in the coconut bra gets in her face. Her family hails from Hawaii and she can actually hula. If you are lucky enough to be her friend, she might brave a Hawaiian swap meet and get you some flowery carseat covers for your hoopty car. And, as a fellow Baylor men's basketball supporter, she understands the need to root for the underdog in basketball games and doesn't give up on them when they continuously mess up. One of these days, those Baylor Bears will show the world. One of these days.

Julia (Jules) - I have no memory of life pre-Julia. There is photographic evidence showing that we were already friends by the time I was 2 and a half and she was 3. The famous picture is of me sitting next to her, blowing out her birthday candles and her just sitting there looking kind of bewildered. I have no clue how we became friends, really. If you've seen that video going around of the two twin babies having a conversation amongst themselves in seemingly gibberish? Maybe that's how it began. After twenty-five years of friendship, there have been times when we talk a lot and when we don't, but nothing changes and we treat each other the same today as we did when we were in daycare. We grew up almost as a team. At some point, she became "Jules" and I don't recall ever asking her if she minded that I call her that, but that's how it is. Despite constantly growing up around each other and spending much of our elementary days being called by the other's name, we are not all that similar in our interests. She is musically inclined, I am not. She enjoys science fiction (a lot). I do not. She can tell you a bunch of sports statistics. I cannot. Despite this, we have such a long history that, even though our lives go down different paths, we are still connected. It's almost like looking in a mirror because we each know where the other is coming from, what they've been through, and that the other is unconditionally there for us. She's like my friendship security blanket, because when people just don't seem to get where I'm coming from on a certain issue, I go to her and usually get validation that I'm not insane in my opinion and that, obviously, the other person is completely off-base. Everybody needs that sometimes.

Anna - I don't remember meeting Anna, either. I have a bad memory for first meetings. I know by middle school, we were friends. She is my travel buddy and my outdoorsy friend. We have very different aptitudes. She is a math whiz (a trait she shares with Oksana), and I am much more language arts-inclined. She was in music, while I was in art classes. She recently admitted not even knowing there was a ceramics class in high school. Not a big deal as I have no idea what math courses were offered once you got beyond the basic requirement for college. She is brave. She walked out onto the Skydeck of the Willis Tower in Chicago like nothing was out of the ordinary (while I crawled onto the ledge through the legs of bystanders). She enjoys running and recently went through surgery that had her unable to walk much for quite some time, but she is planning to run a 5K in a few months. She gets her heart broken but is not incapacitated by it. She is patient and dislikes scary movies just as much as I do. We have very similar senses of humor and can have a blast just sitting in a living room and laughing at a dog. She is one of the most honest people I've ever known. Even if she doesn't come out and say it, usually her facial expression will totally give her away. There is no pretentiousness about Anna. She is genuine.


There they are. Now you've met the Big 5. They are fabulous and wonderful and our friendships not only stand the test of time, but also are not immobilized by the interwebs. We keep in touch through various means and not hearing from one for a while doesn't send me into a panic because I know that we are securely buddies. I think everyone has people that are like this (or I hope they do) and now you've met mine.