Think back to elementary school. You had friends to no end. Not completely true, but whatever. You were pretty much friends with whoever you associated with. Kids in your class at school. Kids from Primary. Kids from swim lessons, dance, baseball, the park, etc. You met them, they were willing to play the same game as you--instant friendship. As long as the kid was willing to play with you and your rules didn't clash you were friends.
Once you got to middle school things changed a little bit. By the time you're 11 or 12 you're kinda starting to figure out who you are. Mom doesn't pick out your cloths for you anymore (...usually). You're starting to find what your interests are. That means that your spread of friends becomes a bit thinner. At this point in your life you hang out with those who wear the same clothes as you, take the same classes as you, etc. Your friends are basically the same people as you.
When you enter high school your pool of friends changes again. True, there are a few that stay the same, but I guess it's more the friendship that changes. You aren't all quite as much of conformists. You branch out just a bit.
College. What a change. These people you live with, see all the time, and you can spend endless hours with them. You don't care much about what the person looks like or does. As long as you can carry on a conversation then you're friends.
But I've even noticed that there's a big difference between freshman year in the dorms and the past year and a half living off-campus. The friendships I made freshman year and the ones I've made since then are very different. I think back to my FHE brothers and a few other groups of people that my roommates and I thought we were pretty good friends with back in good old Heritage Halls. How many of them do I still talk to? And I don't even mean on a regular basis. I mean like ever. At all. It's not that I didn't like any of these people. I just obviously didn't know them as well as I thought I did. If I see any of them on campus now, I might possibly say hi, but certainly not anything more than a "How are you?"
The friends I've made since living off campus though I feel are very different. They are much more genuine and real as opposed to the artificial ones of freshman year. I am much more likely to stay in touch with these people because I really want to, not just out of obligation, for several years to come.
So, why is it that there's this big difference? Well, I feel like I actually know these friends. I know about their lives and their interests and we can sit and talk for hours without ever getting bored of each other. In fact, that's usually what we do. We sit and talk. Freshman year it was all about the games. After ward prayer we immediately grabbed a few decks of cards and headed up to the boy's lobby to play games. Hours of Scum, BS, Catch Phrase, Smurf, Psychologist, Swedish Twister and more ensued. I will admit, I had fun during all those hours. There were lots of funny moments and laughter. But not a lot of talking in the way that you get to know a person. Unlike the past year and a half where after ward prayer we would sit around and chat and then all go back to someone's apartment and sit and talk some more. Somehow talking never got boring. And it resulted in many friendships with people that I can honestly call friends and not people that I get embarrassed when I think about how we called them our "friends."
Moral of the story: games don't make friendships.
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