Bad Friend Maker

I'm really bad at making friends. There are many reasons for this, and maybe this story will help to describe why.

So I met this guy, Adam, at work about two months ago, when a big group of us (us being a bunch of fellow process engineers) went out to lunch. The guy driving was playing the Silversun Pickups and I mentioned how good I thought they were, mainly due to my love of bands with female leads. So then someone said that I am similar to Adam in that way. So I said I should talk to Adam to find some new bands. Well Adam was sitting in the backseat and I had just met him about 10 minutes before. That was really awkward.

Anyway, at lunch I pushed on and talked to Adam about girl bands and was suprised to find out that we actually had very few bands in common. It was a good thing, because it wasn't that he didn't like the bands I liked, it was just that he had never heard them and the same for me with the bands he liked. Anyway, the next weekend we made each other some MP3 CDs. Out of this, I have picked up quite a few new bands I'm into: Pretty Girls Make Graves, Tsunami Bomb, Auf der Maur, Basement Jaxx, Butterfly Boucher, Carina Round, Gertrude, The Gossip, Magneta Lane, Mary Timony, Morningwood, and Tegan and Sara. This alone makes the attempt at making a friend worth it. I think the only band he liked from my collection was the Kidney Thieves, but whatever, that band is awesome.

Another lunch the following week and I learned that he has no kids and no girlfriend (i.e. lots of free time). Also, he is into video games. He had just bought a 360, but was having a lot of trouble with it locking up. Ugh, I'm currently going through a similar issue. He had returned his twice and overall had 3 bad 360's before he gave up on it and has now bought a PS3. I can't blame him given the bad luck he had with the 360. But this was a missed opportunity for our friendship, because we could have played some 360 over Xbox Live. That would create a nice intermediate interaction before actually meeting up together.

Then there was another interaction when the lunch group decided to go to a hookah bar one Friday night. I brought some Dominoes, because that is apparently a game commonly played at hookah bars. While playing, I talked about how much I love games. Adam seemed intrigued and was also a good Dominoes player. The next Monday at work he gave me a CD of some Podcasts he downloaded and enjoyed listening to. There were three podcasts: 2 pertaining to video games, and one just about board games. This was also really cool as the board game podcast has informed me about many really cool boardgames and helped me to understand the style boardgames Christina and I play well together.

Christina does not like to play games with direct confrontation or when the goal of the game is to destroy your opponent like stratego). This can lead to some hostility and throwing of pieces. I'll write another blog entry about my love of board games some other time. Anyway, there is one game I got for Christmas called Memoirs '44. I love this game. I only played half a game with Christina and it was too confrontational for her. That leaves me with no one to play this game.

So I was or am hoping that Adam could fill this role. I felt him out about two weeks ago when we were discussing the podcast about boardgames. He said that he would like to try some of them because he listens to the podcasts, finds it interesting, but has never actually played any of the boardgames being discussed. So I told him that some weekend we should play Memoirs '44. I didn't get the reaction I was hoping for. It wasn't a no, it was just kind of flat ambigous response. I don't know. I decided I would offer a formal invite later in the week.

I sent him an email on a Friday saying I had my whole weekend open and I could bring the game over or he could come over to my place. I had the same trepidation with sending the email as asking a girl out. I decided to send by email, so if he didn't want to do it, he could say no. I hate being asked in person to do things I don't want to do, because I'll probably say yes out of politeness or pity. And I don't want to play with someone who is not interested.

The result of this email, was an immediate auto-response that he was out of the office for that Friday and until the following Tuesday. So basically he would not read that email until he came back on Tuesday. The following week I briefly spoke to him about his new HD TV and the Kidney Thieves. But there was no talk of the email I sent. I know he received it though. Christina came home for Spring Break that weekend, so I wasn't going to leave for a night a board gaming.

This weekend was the next available weekend. I gathered courage and sent him basically the same email on Friday morning. I did see him at work that day. I got no response to the email. No acknowledgement of the email at all. There is no way you can go an entire day at work and not read your email. It is a critical component to our job. And this is where things stand. I'm not going to press the issue. I feel smitten.

Also, as a side story to my inability to find a friend to play this game with, I've become desperate. I have looked into volunteering at a retirement home, but everything online makes those old people look disgusting. And I'm not sure I want to play a game about WWII with some guy that was in it. I considered becoming a big brother, but that seems like a larger commitment than just a board game, and what if the kid doesn't even like board games? Then what is looking like my best option is to play with my boss's son. Playing with a 9 year old is scary enough, but then hanging out at my boss's house with his son is very strange, right? What is really holding me back is that he lives on the other side of Boise. I think I'm going to put an entry into Craig's list.