How friends work by Jackson Chew

A "random" is someone whom you've met "randomly" (as with most of how you would've met most of your close friends now anyway, i.e. we randomly met in the same class back in high school) and they have never seemed to have passed that level of randomness either because of:
1/ Lack of interest
2/ Huge differences amongst each other
3/ You just don't have the opportunity to see them often

Without really trying to laugh in the face of the whole "friend-ship" system, it can be divided into several phases (as defined by me and my limited experience in having friends... I can count the total number of friends I have with just one hand... with all my fingers missing)

ANEW -> RANDOM -> ACQUAINTANCE -> FRIEND -> DRINKING BUDDY -> BEST FRIEND

Of course, the concept of friendship is not that simple, but for the sake of a quick self-satisfactory session of exerting the limited creativity I had just newly acquired after a long week of work, I'll leave it as that.

A quick run-down, although most of it is self-explanatory. ANEW is someone you have just met once and quite possibly never remember them or bother to get to know them. A RANDOM is a familiar figure you seem to run into and cannot avoid and your (one or two sentence) conversations go along the lines of:
"Hey, how's it going?"
"Good, Jackson. You remember my name right?"
"... *shrug* ... at least you're pretty on the inside."

Since then she has not bothered to look my way.

An Acquaintance is someone you have maintained a decent (but blunt) conversation with, have had a classes or beds together, but you don't really keep in contact with them. They're the guys you talk to at uni, use as a last resort to bum with at uni and quite possibly never see ever again (and hallejuah for that). A year from now, you will run into them on the street and say a quick hi. Ten years from now, you will run into them on the street, you'll stare blankly at them, then keep walking. A typical conversation goes along the lines of:
"Hey dude, how's it going man?"
"I'm going good man. How did your ACCT1501 go?"
"Pretty shit man. Well, friends are waiting for me over there. Catch you later."

Maybe this acquaintance dude isn't so bad afterall. If fate allows it, he'll find you with your CD player and his curiosity allows you two to bond. Or you make a Pedro joke, and he seems to be the only guy who understands what you're talking about. Eventually they get upgraded to a friendship status. This is the guy you can maintain a comfortable conversation with and seems to know exactly (or close to) what you're talking about most of the time. And if he doesn't, he has accepted you for who you are, and vice versa you.

"Log is awesome."
"I'm gonna get log."

Drinking buddies are the friends who you normally hang around and you've overcome the whole comfortable silence thing. The friends who can just sit quietly together at a bar and drink and transmit their brainwaves as a new form of silent communication.

If you screwed your friend's girlfriend, and he forgives you after a punch to the face, that's a best friend. The movie starts in an hour, it's pouring like hell, and you guys decide to walk from Broadway to Circular Quay for the hell of it. He gives you the shits, but you don't care. She says something bad about you, but you know she doesn't mean it. She shares all her stuff, even her money, with you. He screws yoou up again and its harder for you guys to talk to each other again, but that's because we were best friends. We used to be friends a long time ago.

***Some of you may/ may not be reading this and thinkig to yourself, jeez, what the hell is he on about? You'd be surprised by how many people in this world lack a lot of the basics of socialising, such as saying hello. If of course this is by choice, you would be my best friend right now. People suck.
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If you haven't seen Good Night and Good Luck, go do yourself a favour. I'll be ordering some suspenders, a fedora hat and a carton of Kents.