how you met your closest friends

[Rachel]

Phantom, you sound wonderful and well balanced. My closest friend until she died was my darling Lee. I met her when I was taking a break in the Trail-Nelson area of British Columbia. I had been living in with troubled, abused, at risk or dying children and I was just so burnt out. I attended a private dinner with a friend to Lee and her husband Herbert's home and they showed slides of Kenya and how they met and fell in love. He was a geophysicist and she had worked at a fashion house in Johannesburg,. He also worked part time for National Georaphic and did amazing pictures. They had two very young children, a boy and girl , who were used to being very wealthy(she used to change the furniture once a month, new , and dishes too until she got tired of it) and these children were precocious to say the least. I got on well with them and just like that Lee asked me to be their nanny. So I did and I loved it and she was so hilarious and endearing. She would go to get some health food and come back with an entire outfit for me, including hat, the whole high fashion thing. We used to go to A&W drive throughs and she would usually forget to wait until the waitress came to take the tray off the window and usually also the big thick mugs would fly off and smash on the ground. Of course she paid but I was so embarrassed. And alwas when she phoned me after I was no longer needed with the children, she would say in this lilting voice "Hellooooooooooo darling , guess who? . How I loved her and she taught me so much about being strong and loving and brave. She had surgery to remove a tumour and unfortunately died from pnuemonia following. I admit I felt I too was dying and had to go for long walks for about two months to not feel like I was flipping out.
My other close friends I have had for decades, just a few and we don't see each other that much, but when we do it is as if no time has passed at all since we last were togetther. They are truly a gift to me.

[spiralthinker]

I find it really hard to make friends most of the time. I work from home, don't have many friends from college and I tend to like to be alone. Most of my close friends are people I met online. I know it sounds weird to some people, but I just feel more comfortable talking to people online rather than in person.

[Phantom Paragrapher]

@Spiral Thinker - Im with you there as I have alot of friends I talk to online and I think when we are online we can build a persona about ourselves and its always easier to type than talk face-to-face most of the time and another thing when your'e online in forums like these you are with like-minded people minus the spammers

[Frith]

I have a lot of acquaintances and people I consider higher up on my friends hierarchy but my closest friend I met in elementary school, 7th grade if I'm thinking correctly. We became close friends and even closer in highschool; we even kept a series of notebooks that we wrote back and forth in (which I still have and I'll admit they are painfully embarrasing to look at and read through =]). We were always best friends even if we didn't speak or hang out everyday in HS and I'm sure that our college experience has brought us even closer.

Just yesterday she remarked that she was glad that we didn't have to hang out constantly to stay connected because we both have busy schedules; for example, we could not hang out for several weeks and when we did happen to get together it wasn't in the least awkward, in fact, we can pick up conversations like it was just the past day we spoke.

[margaine]

I have a lot of acquaintances and people I consider higher up on my friends hierarchy but my closest friend I met in elementary school, 7th grade if I'm thinking correctly. We became close friends and even closer in highschool; we even kept a series of notebooks that we wrote back and forth in (which I still have and I'll admit they are painfully embarrasing to look at and read through =]). We were always best friends even if we didn't speak or hang out everyday in HS and I'm sure that our college experience has brought us even closer.

Just yesterday she remarked that she was glad that we didn't have to hang out constantly to stay connected because we both have busy schedules; for example, we could not hang out for several weeks and when we did happen to get together it wasn't in the least awkward, in fact, we can pick up conversations like it was just the past day we spoke.

Oh wow, I can just imagine what the experience of reading those notebooks now would be like! It must be great to have them, even if they are too embarrasing to read.

[Frith]

Oh wow, I can just imagine what the experience of reading those notebooks now would be like! It must be great to have them, even if they are too embarrasing to read.

Seriously, haha. I mean the things that ran through our 8th grade minds now seem so ridiculous; boy obsessions, current pop culture likes, drawings, my constant complaints about algebra, etc etc. It's like a time warp. =]

[Nurkie]

My oldest friend I met in first grade. Another I met on craigslist lol.... and my wife, I met online on a forum.

[margaine]

a sweet, if somewhat long-winded, article about online friends. I seem to talk about (and to) all of you "forum friends" more than any geographically close friends I have. I can entirely relate to this blog post.

http://offbeathome.com/2013/01/my-be...m-the-internet

from the article:

It's been nearly a decade since I met my internet friends. I still call them that, by the way. Not because they're not also real life friends at this point, but because it's become a term of endearment. They came from the internet, and they made my life so much better.

[Nurkie]

I have quite a few "Online friends", one of which I met some 15 years ago, yet we have never met in person nor talked on the phone. Strange how that can be.