Civility and Friendship

I'm graduating in a year. So is Marie. Somehow we both got this far at BYU without having taken American Heritage (even though the school has sent me a couple of emails regarding the subject). Hearing about the horrors of American Heritage and not wanting to be the two seniors in a room full of freshmen we decided to take Honors 240: American Government and Society instead.

While in class today we were discussing civility and friendship. The founding fathers would call friends by today's standards acquaintances, and best friends simply friends. The word "friend" meant a lot more than it did today. These people were those that you kept around forever. In class we talked about how back then you'd have to spend months or years with an acquaintance before deciding that they were truly a friend. It reminded me of something that took place just over a year ago.

I'd worked at Helaman Halls for a good year and a half. A good chunk of that time I worked with a girl named Megan that I got along pretty well with. I decided that I wanted to be her friend, but not just in the work sense. And I felt really awkward about it. How do you take a work relationship and get it to the level of real friendship? I felt strange asking her to do stuff outside of work with me. I remember going over to her apartment briefly to check it out. And now that I think about it, months before I decided I wanted to get to know her better she asked me to go to a Men's Chorus concert with her, and I did. But we'd never hung out.

I think that what happened was we were discussing Sammy's and their pie shakes with Hilary. Someone (I don't even know who) mentioned that we should all three go to Sammy's for lunch or dinner or something. It was a tri woman date. At the agreed upon time Megan showed up at my apartment and we walked over to Sammy's together. We wondered where Hilary was. We called her. She didn't answer. We texted her. She wasn't coming. So there we were- just the two of us eating burgers and pie shakes and I didn't really know what to talk about. I can't even remember what we talked about. I'm sure it had to do with Hilary being a flake and backing out on us. But it went over well enough.

And that is why a few weeks later Megan would come over when I was really sick with her friend Hilary (not the previously mentioned one) to watch (500) Days of Summer and to eat cookies. A few weeks later we would go on our first official "woman date" to the Provo downtown gallery stroll. We baked together that night, and it was a strange concoction indeed. At some point it just happened: we transitioned from coworkers into real friends.

And that's what I thought about in class. How I wanted to be someone's friend but really had no idea how to approach the situation. And how now that we are real friends how grateful I am that all the me being awkward and not knowing what to do was worth it. And how I'm grateful that I have Megan in my life as such a good friend. She's there when I need her. She feeds me baked goods. She patiently listens to me cry, complain and joke. She gives me advice knowing full well that I'll probably only follow part of it, if any at all. And she doesn't judge me, and if she does she definitely doesn't let me feel it.

It's just funny how things work out. Because who would have thought when we first met that we would become real friends? And writing this makes me think about the other times I've tried to take friends from work/class and make them real friends (Nate and Jeff come to mind). And this makes me even more grateful for the times that I have spent being a CA, because somehow there is no transition from coworkers to friends. It just happens. The bonding process happens in such a way that you work towards becoming friends that work together instead of coworkers trying to become friends. Again, why would I want to miss out on that opportunity?