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I. Friendship and SI have known S since the first week of my freshman year in college, when he accosted us for weeks to try to borrow our computer, so he could allegedly "hack" into a professor's computer and download the answer key to a CS exam. We were naïve freshmen who believed him and refused on a daily basis, but he kept persisting and coming back. It took us a few weeks of this courtship ritual to realize that this was his sense of humor and that he was totally joking. That was quintessential S. We became friends.
He lived on our floor, so we spent quite a bit of time together. He was always in our suite. Several times we came back from classes (4 out of 6 of us were all freshman engineers in the honors program, so we had the same class schedule), and found him lounging in our living room.
Another time, he took all of the furniture out of my suitemate's bedroom and exchanged it with the furniture in the lounge.
Then he graduated, I moved out here, and we lost touch for a few years as our paths diverged.
As luck would have it, he ended up taking a job that brought him out here quite a bit, and so we hung out a lot for 2 or 3 years--I think between 2000 and 2003.
He is one of these friends that I can not see for several years and then catch up exactly where we left off. I distinctly remember his first visit out here—it had been maybe 4 or 5 years since I last saw him, and I felt like we never left college. We had pizza at some chain Italian place in a strip mall somewhere, and I remember discussing how comfortable our friendship still felt after all of these years.
These never-changing friendships—the older I get and the more I change—seem to be fewer and farther between. I've drifted apart from many of my grade school friends, and even some more recently acquired ones. Sometimes, as in the case of my hallmark friendships, we outgrow each other. I always feel kindof sad when this happens, though usually by the time this happens, it's often too late; I've outgrown it enough that it doesn't seem worth salvaging, to hold onto what used to be.
Sometimes, when the other person outgrows faster than you outgrow them, it's hard. You want the relationship to stay the same, but it inevitably changes, as we change as human beings. You accept that some friendships weren't meant to last and move on, I guess kindof like with old relationships.
Sometimes, you wish you had better closure. Two of my friendships, rather than gradually drifting apart, ended rather abruptly. Partly, I admit this is because I can be a friend nazi. If I try hard to make plans to see you, I don't want to get an email always last minute cancelling, or telling me that "I'm all booked every weekend, because I have dinner plans with Moe, Joe, and Hoe. I can only meet you on Thursdays at the Livermore family in the park Thursdays, between the hours of 6 and 7 p.m., because after that, we have to leave promptly to put Lea to bed."
I understand and am more than willing to work around bedtime schedules, but it is impossible for me to get to Livermore at 6 on weekdays. Plus the "I'm all booked" tone that is endemic to this area really irks me. So with this friend, I just never wrote back. Nor did my friend. Ah well. Ten years of friendship out like that. (But if the friendship was important to her, she would've written back or followed up right? )
Through all of these years, S remains one of my close friends. When he was single and he came out here on business trips, we spent quite a bit of time together—sometimes too much time—or so I thought at the time. Now I regret not having taken more advantage of his availability. I used to be able to call him any time.
So although I am 93 percent happy for him, 7 percent of me is slightly sad to lose this neverending access to him.
I also regret not appreciating him more while he was single. Isn't that funny how it works? You appreciate someone more when they are no longer available. This seems to be my recurring pattern in life. If they call you incessantly, you ignore them, but then as soon as they become out of commission or are no longer interested in you, you retroactively appreciate them and want more access to them. Stupid brain.
Not that I didn't appreciate him before. But we were both single, and while I busied myself with violin lessons, choir, classes, he seemed to always want to get together and go someplace far on very short notice. One time, I was working on some Bach piece and couldn't fathom the idea of being away from my instrument for 4 days (right before a lesson!), so I brought my violin with me when he dragged me to some last minute excursion to Morrow Bay. It seems utterly ridiculous now, (well, ok, it still seems ridiculous to get a private instruction after 4 straight days of not practicing, but I suppose I could've postponed the lesson.) but made sense at the time. And bless S for putting up with my irrationalities of all sorts.
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II. All the things I need to know I learned from S.S is also one of the smartest and most sensible people I know. As much as I sometimes hate to admit this, he is almost always right. I still follow his many sagely pieces of advice that he has dispensed over the years. Here are some of them.
1. One cannot double-integrate e-x2. Being an engineering dropout, I unfortunately cannot remember enough multivariable calc to derive the proof to this, but if needed, I think I can brandish my old calculus notebook to prove this.
2. One should put up smiling photographs if one ever decides to try internet dating.
3. When one get his/her first real job, the first thing one should do is pay off all debts. Actually better yet, don't get into debt, which well, some of us don't have the luxury of avoiding. (Though fortunately, I never amassed any debt in grad or undergrad, since I learned to live on less than $1000 per month. In the Bay Area, I add.) After getting out of debt, the next thing one should do is to save up six months of living expenses-before spending on big ticket items, like a trip or new car.
This I did, and then passed on this advice to my younger brother.
4. One should put as much as one can into his retirement plan and increase his contributions every time he gets a raise. (Check.)
5. Never buy a new car. Actually, this one depends on one's life and financial circumstances, but in my transient don't-know-where-I'll-be-three-years-from-now state, it doesn't make any sense to buy a new car, since a car depreciates 50 percent of its value in three years. The one thing about a new car is that you know its history. Still, for the most part, if you can find a used car that has been well taken care of, given its rapid rate of depreciation, it makes more sense to buy used. I'd rather spend the money on good food and travel.
6. If one is going to buy a car, one should pay in cash. Again, very few people do this, but I agree with him 100 percent on this one. Obviously, it depends on your circumstances, since sometimes your car just dies and you might not have a choice, but I never understood the logic of people who take out an 8 percent loan for a car (which means that in 4.5 years, you have paid in interest 50 percent of the value of the car) for a 4 or 5-year term, for something whose value depreciates to less than half its original value in three years. If you have a million dollars to burn, I suppose it doesn't matter, but if you earn less than say $70K, you are spending a lot of money on interest payments.
6a., a corollary to 6 is that one should avoid paying interest on things that depreciate, if one's life situation allows it. I guess this is another way of saying live within one's means. (Though obviously, many of my grad-school or starving artist friends who live on less than $2K/month can't nec. do this.)
7. If one really wants something, persist, even if one fails. S is also a persister. Sometimes I cursed him for it, but for the most part, this is something I need to work on, whether it be dating, jobs, musical instruments, or just life in general. I think I give up too easily. One of my goals is to work on this.
8. Being frugal but generous. Although S is frugal, he is also extremely generous and knows how to spend money on things that are important to him (e.g. a memorable meal or a used luxury car). I used to get annoyed when he'd pay for many of my dinners and excursions when we hung out, but I was earning a piddling and he was earning a lot more, and he never seemed to mind subsidizing things I couldn't otherwise afford to do, so eventually I gave up.
Instead, I now try to do reciprocate the generosity to other people (e.g. my grad student friends).
Also, rather than spend $ on that daily latte or lunch or other "meh" convenience items, I'd rather skip those and splurge on a nice meal or an opera ticket, which is what I do for the most part.
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III. L
L is the right person for S, because she appreciates him for who he is. S is a truly wonderful person, but sometimes with eccentricities that other women didn't necessarily appreciate. For example, only engineers appreciate his constant reminder to us that you can't double-integrate e-x2. Whereas it took us several weeks to figure out the real S, L did it in one date, which just reinforces the idea that L is right for S.
I worried about whether S. would become less S-like and more subdued as a result of getting together with L, (as guy sometimes do when they become attached or fall in love) but he's still more or less the same way as I knew him, and better and many ways, because L seems to bring out S's best qualities. Of course I say this based on my short meeting with her at the wedding.
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IV. L and S's wedding
S and L's wedding was lovely, which I realize is a mega cliché. Weddings make me really happy. It's wonderful to see one of your closest and dearest in their best element and radiant.
Every time I go to one, I regret not making more of a concerted effort to go to the far away ones (e.g. ones in Japan, Atlanta, Germany, etc.).
Sometimes, it is a time for catching up with old friends, though the last few weddings I have attended have not been like this. At this particular wedding, I didn't know many people (no one from our original college group was there), other than snake and shy friend. So it was nice to see them and quasi-catch up with them.
I sat next to a group of lovely single ladies, dubbed the "dog park girls", b/c they all met via their dogs. I spent most of my time talking to the single guy at my table, b/c I have an easier time one-on-one than being the token stranger in a big group of people who already know each other. Plus I have an inherent fear of dogs, so I didn't want to spend the entire evening talking about dogs. The girls were very nice and I think tried to include me, but I'm just bad at these situations, and I was also not seated in an optimal location to hear most of their conversations.
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V. Stupid traditions
I've decided that this is the last time that I'm going to take part in the bouquet-throwin/catching tradition. I know there is a similar tradition for guys, but of the dozen plus weddings I've been to, whereas most have had the bouquet-throwing tradition where all of the single females line up and try to catch the bouquet, only two have had the equivalent single-guy-lineup event.
Perhaps because I'm single, I have all sorts of issues (and yes, insecurities) with this dumb tradition. First off, it's sexist, because I rarely see the guy equivalent tradition being carried out at the weddings I've attended. So if you are female, everyone at the wedding knows of your legal attachment—or lack thereof—status, which quite frankly, is none of anyone's beeswax. Then there is the notion of catching the bouquet—which is supposed to signify that you will be the next one to wed.
Now, there are times I feel secure about being single, but other times—like at a wedding—it brings out the worst insecurities in me, and part of this is because of traditions of this ilk, where the implication underlying these rituals is that girls are supposed to get married and everyone wants to be married (because we all want to catch the bouquet).
Truth be told, I probably would want to get married if I ever meet the right guy (or girl, if anyone at work is reading this), but I don't necessarily want to get married for the sake of getting married, just because society expects you to. I also know of other independent-minded women and men who have no interest in getting "married off" to someone, thank you very much.
Thus, I have decided that I am no longer going to do this silly lineup to catch the bouquet. Call me the curmudgeon for bashing such a beloved tradition, but the older I get, the more self-conscious I feel about being in the cattle lineup and getting inspected by the rest of the holier-than-thou-because-I-have-a-status crowd whilst donning my "not-married" invisible scarlet A badge for all to see.
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L and S, I wish you many years of love, laughter, happiness and peace.
1 comment:
you guys must be really close! i like S's advice :) pretty thoughtful yet true!
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