photo by me

So, there is this thing called friendship. I know you’re all familiar with it. I’m sure most of you have people you call friends, maybe even BEST friends. You may have that girlfriend you can call up in the middle of the night when you have something that is pressing and you need to talk it out with her. You may have that guy friend who will go on long motorcycle rides with you because he understands the enjoyment of being together and yet being in your own little world.

Or maybe you have a group of friends that you travel with or that you meet up with once a year in a great place to swap the stories of your lives.

I don’t have that.

I don’t think that I’ve had close friends that I hung out with on a regular basis since the early 90s.

I have online friends – people that are strictly online and who converse with me on a regular basis.

I have online/offline friends – people I met online and have had the opportunity to meet offline a few times but not enough to “hang out.”

I have work friends – people I occasionally have lunch with, talk to in depth, but rarely, if ever, see outside of work.

I started thinking about this because one of my work friends said something to me the other day. I had told her about my brother saying he’d go out with me to the singles hiking groups, etc. I had shared with her some of the issues that I deal with in online dating. We have talked rather extensively about both of our lives in-between doing work. In fact, she met her husband online and understands some of the issues I’m dealing with.

So we’re talking about how to meet people. I told her that I think Flagstaff is one of those towns where it’s incredibly hard to meet people. The only place to go is bars and who wants to meet someone there? I said, “Most of those men only want one night stands, anyway.”

She cracks me up. She responded with, “Well, once in a while that may not be so bad.” Heh.

She said that she and her girlfriends (before she was married) used to hang out at one another’s homes or go do things together. They would meet men through one another.

I told her that I didn’t have that kind of a network. She looked at me. I said, “I don’t have any girlfriends.” She looked at me again.

“Dawn. What am I? I’m your girlfriend. Am I chopped liver?”

Oh…and I had to open my big mouth. “But…you’re a work friend. I don’t see you outside of work.”

She says, “That can be changed. Let’s do something. Let’s hang out.” She made as if to take off her wedding ring and said, “I’ll go looking for single men with you.”

I laughed. “You and my brother are looking out for me.”

We talked some more. But it was in the back of my head and still is. This is a woman who wants to be my friend – outside of work. She wants to hang out. She wants to do things. She has my best interests at heart and cares about me enough to want me to find someone to be with.

And I don’t know how to tell her thank you. Because with those few words, “I’m your girlfriend”, she touched my heart. And she made me feel really good about this friendship we’re building.

A friendship. Who woulda thunk it?