Tuesday, August 17, 2004

“I’ll be your friend and help you carry on, for it won’t be long till you’re gonna need somebody to lean on.” –‘lean on me’
… Oh Kharl. Tea has been entertaining herself with Cable 8, our local cable access channel. The senior home and historical society events are generally what’s on it, maybe a high school concert if you get lucky. Today it was a talent show or something.

Well, let’s just say our town is not very talented. The seniors look about to keel over (and they ought not sing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” while wearing slinky dresses designed for young women of the 30s), our youth are seriously lacking in the synchronized dancing department, and the custodial staff consists of middle-aged men, who ought not be dancing to songs with the word “sexy” in them.

Can’t she just watch the Olympics?

Been on the phone. Our friend was having an early life crisis cuz her mother was a little late coming home from having a cast removed. (The crisis consisted of “What if something happened?” over and over and whining.) We told her that doctors get swamped and things take longer than expected, she might have gone on an errand and forgotten to call, all that stuff, and she kept having her crisis. It was funny to us, but since she was in crisis, the way she was that time she was convinced someone was breaking into her house, she wasn’t amused. Then her mom came home with groceries and no cast. Did we call it or what? And she thought our laughter was unsupportive.

She’s such a drama queen. But she’s not really a great actress or writer, but she thinks she is. And we can’t tell her that, or she’ll, and we quote, “go into depression.” If you are aware you are going into depression before it happens, you are not depressed. You just want attention. And if we told her that, she’d tell us we’re unsupportive. Considering we pretend to love her stories and pay to see her high school level plays while she refuses to pay to see concerts done by our band that has won several awards on a national level when we tell her about them and she has access to our stories and poems but doesn’t read or give feedback, she cannot tell us we are unsupportive. We almost want to join drama or tech to occupy some time, but if we did, she’d get mad because we joined her club. She can only whine about how much she’s sacrificing and the costs if she’s the only one in it. And even so, we have a job, so the cost doesn’t fall on dear Mother, so there’s no chance of being told “I’m not paying that much for your club” since if we really want to, they’ll let us pay our own way in. The fact that our parents pay more for our bassoon lessons every month than a year of drama club does in all is irrelevant. And she’d make a big show of being supportive of our success or lack thereof in either group.

It is too hard to be supportive to her. Somehow, with this friend, being supportive compromises both honesty and our own desires. Good thing our closest friendships have two-way support.

We’re so glad she quit band. Not that it doesn’t mean we hear about how hard band is and how much we must be struggling to keep up. Not that she knows anything about it, since she doesn’t come to concerts and if we told her about the band experience, she’d tell us she doesn’t care. We told her we don’t care about the details of her drama rehearsals. She told us we were unsupportive.

Hang support. Next year, if band doesn’t interfere, we’re gonna join something.

Will be in NY till Saturday. *mutters* Joy fills our heart …
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