Disclaimer: I started writing this when I was angry at someone for not meeting my expectations. Thank goodness I know so many awesome people who astound me in every way (you are one of them) to balance out the duds.
Most people probably don’t have a checklist of qualities they look for in a friend. You meet someone and they either become a friend or they don’t, we don’t often stop to think about why it did or didn’t happen. However, if you did stop you might come up with a few things that set apart those who made the cut… Here are a few that occur to me:
Remember AIM?
1. Picking up on sarcasm.
Example: When AIM was happening, back in the day, I used to get real tired of having to right “jk lol” after my sarcastic comments. I then decided the people who needed such qualifiers were just too much work.
Tangential to picking up my sarcasm is finding it funny when I’m occasionally really mean. Often when I’m really angry, or drunk (see the three stages of drunk Jennifer).
2. Common sense.
Example: When trying to set up a time to meet with some other graduate students by email, I suggested “let’s meet tomorrow at 11:30.” Let’s say it was on a Monday (because it freaking was). Graduate student number one replied shortly, “That sounds good.” Graduate student number two replied at 5am the next morning, “Ok, see you there.” At 11:30 on Tuesday, graduate student number one and I are sitting in the meeting room, twiddling our fingers. I waited patiently for an hour, and when number two didn’t show up, I asked him what gives. He replied, “Wait, I thought we said tomorrow.” I guess that one’s on me for not specifying that I meant tomorrow from the day when I wrote the email, not from the day you happened to read it. Because that makes sense.
3. Dependability.
Example: Just show up when you say you’re going to. If you can’t show up, please let me know before I get too far. And don’t make up some crazy reason about why you couldn’t make it: see number 4.
4. Not lying for no reason.
Listen, sometimes it’s perfectly acceptable to lie. You don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, so you say, “Yes! You look great in that pink-leopard-print bodysuit. Your ass doesn’t look fat at all in those horizontal-striped parachute pants.” Or you don’t want to get in trouble for something, “No officer, I certainly did not punch graduate student number two in the nose. I was…I was…dead at the time!” But listen, don’t lie to me when there’s absolutely no reason for it.
Example: One of my old bosses had a habit of lying. About everything. And making up really elaborate lies too, so it was SO OBVIOUS. When all she had to say is, “I’m not coming in today,” and I would have been like, oh. Ok. You’re my boss, you don’t really have to explain it to me.
But instead, she said things like, “I slipped on the ice-covered stairs outside my apartment this morning and threw out my back. My neighbor had to come outside and carry me back up the stairs and into my apartment, it was kind of embarrassing really but now I can’t move.” Or my favorite, when she sent an email saying, “I have an oncology appointment tomorrow in Indy at 1pm and I’m not sure if I’ll be back in town in time to come back to work before 5pm.” Yeah, she dropped cancer in there. And no, she did not have cancer. She was a cancer.
She had so many great qualities. Jk, lol.
Whether you have an internal checklist or not, sometimes you meet someone for the first or second time and you have a really clear, clicky moment of, hey, I think we’re going to be friends. The first time I noticed my now fiancé as potentially a pretty cool guy, we were at our friend’s house. Our friend was trying to convince the gathered party that Coke Zero tasted exactly like normal Coke, and future fiancé said, “No it doesn’t! You’re crazy.” And I was like… alright. This guy is a winner. We can talk.
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