Making Friends: What I learned from my Dog

Last night I took my mutt, Sebastian, to the dog run for a romp with his buddies. People say city dogs do not get out much, but my dog has a more fulfilling social life than I do. Toward the end of the evening as the sun began to set and other dogs headed for home Sebastian started to play with a gorgeous Husky named Kai. His mother and I had great conversation; she's quirky and weird, like me. The she expressed a desire for human contact to be like dog contact. "Why do we have to play games with each other?"She asked. Our dogs performed the rump and genital sniff; I guess that's akin to a handshake and hello in human behavior. They growled and barked out some territorial canine drama that needed to be said. Then they raced each other around the dog park while intermittently play fighting and doing dog stuff. That means they are best friends and will be forever.
Wouldn't life be easier if we made the decision to be friends with someone when you meet them. We know immediately if we like a person-if we connect with them. Why do we drag a burgeoning platonic friendship out like dating?
It's hard to meet someone when you come to a new city by yourself and when you finally find a person you think you could be friends with the rules must be followed: Exchange emails, find a reason to contact, then another reason, soon you may have coffee, not dinner, just coffee, then finally you score the phone number. On the first friend date you follow the same format as a romantic one: Don't talk to much about yourself, ask questions, and never talk about your ex-friends. When you part company with someone you really connect with you're giddy and hope they will call you back. A kink in any part of the system spells doom for the new friendship.
Dogs, it seems, do the same thing, yet they do it in two minutes and if, in the middle of their date, some dispute arises over the ball or humping they bark it out and move on.
The next time you're on a friend date and your platonic paramour wants to go for burgers when you want sushi try barking. "No I want sushi!"
"I want burgers!" "SUSHI!" "BURGERS!" "Italian?" "Okay"
I have about six friends because I don't really have acquaintances. Life is to short to put effort into friends that will never achieve first name only status in my cell phone or understand why I eat a whole bag of chocolate in one sitting. My two best and longest friends live in other states and looking back to when we met, there was some sniffing and barking, but otherwise we didn't play games unless it was Trivial Pursuit.
What do you think about the friendship dance? Have you had similar experiences?

Social Networks-I've used them to meet people when I first moved to New York City. They are not dating services, they are to get people together who are often like minded for friendships. I'm still friends with a few people.
Meet in.org
Craigslist is a great resource for meeting people too.



3 comments:

nan said...

No sniffing or barking? umm...i do recall a period of time (which i'm surely not proud of) we - all 3 of us - sniffed and barked sweety. HE (it's always about a boy) shall remain nameless. I'm really proud of us though...as destructive of a situation as that could have been, (there was definite game playing) it didn't break us apart...very cool.
It's been a tough road for the 3 of us....it still is..but you are right...in the beginning...we all just clicked...no interviewing each other, no pro's and con's lists, no thoughts of "what if she's a stalker?", no question about if the you were "worthy" of my friendship 8-)

We just bonded, one day you weren't there...the next day you were...and you never left.

People just aren't that simple anymore...

p.s. I do miss my little firefly...is she buzzing around here somewhere?

Shiny Starlet said...

I forgot about that boy. The boy always goes away but the friends stay forever.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.