When I was in like, 4th grade, I was deeply obsessed with a band. They ruled my little black heart and my thoughts and everything else. By "everything else," I mean my room was covered in pictures of them, I sang their songs to myself all the time, I lived for the moments when MTV would show their videos. I even insisted that people call me by the name of one of their songs. Yes, it was that bad.
This other girl and I would sit on the swings at school and talk about the band. We'd discuss how hot they were, facts about their lives (yes, all gleaned from Tiger Beat), and talk about how hot they were. I know I repeated that last bit, but honestly, the music factored very little into it. What can I say? I got boobs, my period, and became obsessed with musicians. Thus is the trifecta of becoming a woman.
Anyway, we did this all first semester. During Winter Break, we called each other, excitedly discussing what music we received as gifts, celebrating most when it was music from our band. Spring semester rolled around and we spent many happy hours talking about their new videos and how much the tour was changing them. The tour thing was a big concern. It was the 80s, after all.
Then one day, she wasn't saying much. Actually, she may not have been saying much for several days, but in my zealot state of blooming groupielust, I possibly just kept on babbling and didn't notice for a while. Whatever the case, and some point, I realized I'd been speaking almost exclusively for a while and asked her if something was wrong.
"No," she replied, as she shifted nervously on her swing. "It's just that, well, like all we talk about is this band. Like we never talk about anything else. I'm tired of them."
Now, had I possessed any small bits of maturity, I might have realized that I was being obsessive and needed to cultivate a more fleshed out relationship with this girl. However, I just saw this as a total betrayal of me and all I stood for. So naturally, I yelled at her. She then declared me "dirty minded" and vowed never to speak to me again.
Which, okay, I don't know what dirty minded had to do with anything. And if she thought I was dirty minded back them, she'd be horrified by the thoughts I have now. Dirty minded indeed!
Still, as an adult looking back on the situation, I can see I was wrong to handle it the way I did. She wasn't interested in talking about the band all the damned time and I was being overbearing about it and boring . . . and also, it seems, dirty minded. I probably could have just backed off on the band talk, limiting it to maybe a normal level of conversation, and we could have remained friends until my crazy mother moved us again.
Instead, I walked away from the friendship without much of a thought because I had my band to obsess about and she walked away, I would assume, relieved that she no longer had to hear me talking all the damned time.
You know, the fun thing about stories from your past where you realize you were the one being the total jackass, is that it affords you a very rare moment to find some clarity. In life, we meet a lot of people and form friendships for many, many different reasons.
Except that, most of the time, we don't really form friendships. We form alliances or mutual interest circles or, well, victims. However, if we're really interested in the friendship bit, whenever we hit communication snags, we have a chance to evaluate what is most important to us. Is it talking about the subject, gaining pleasure from this other person, or is it developing some kind of lasting bond with this person.
Sometimes, it is one of the first two, and if you're both cool with that, it's perfectly acceptable. On more rare occasions, we find someone who we really want to bond with. In those instances, we need to figure out something to talk about other than the band. Oh, and apparently, it helps if you do it in a way that isn't dirty minded.
Unless you're entertained by that kind of thing.
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