Will You Be My Friend?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I wasn’t exactly Casanova when it came to dating, well apparently that awkward, not picking up on cues and overall ignorance to the process, is also my style when it comes to making friends – something I didn’t realize I was in want of.

In my Calgary life making friends was something that happened naturally and there was always an in, either someone you knew, a common place – such as work or school. Also since I had lived there for so long, as anyone who has, you start collecting people in your life. We have now been in Halifax for over two months and have been so busy trying to get organized, settled and acquainted with our surroundings, and more importantly finding the hidden gems (for another post), that neither myself nor my partner have put much thought and even less effort into making friends. We are both, me more than him, content being on our own and since we still have friends – thank you technology, we do have other people to talk to besides each other. But like dating, you are totally great owning your independent singleness, until you run into a Henry Cavill or Gal Gadot look alike at the pub, your whole stance on not conforming to societies standards of relationships goes out the window, and you gain a new appreciation for white picket fences.

Which brings me to the other day when Cillian and I were at the park, and a J.Crew family started to play within our proximity. They are the kind of family that you see in magazines and you think when I grow up I want to be like that – except you are grown up and you are definitely not like that. Grandma and dad (in-law) were skipping stones, while Grandpa and mom (in-law) watched the sailboats, the baby with a full head of blonde hair sitting calmly in a fashionable buggy. Cillian and I were on a bench, he was half hanging off with only one sock on because I was giving him a bottle and he likes to try his acrobatics during this time, the top of my dress was partially undone, my scratched up, bent sunglasses were falling off my face and therefore not covering my adult acne. Mom came over and introduced herself and we started chatting about our sons, hers only a month older than mine, discussing milestones, teeth, dogs, and after a few (a lot) of awkwardness from my side J.Crew decided to continue their walk through the park. Of course after the conversation ended and as I kept on bumping into them through our travels back to our car, I thought of all the things I could have said to entice a meet-up – second to liquid courage, is the hypothetical courage you get when you play out the scenario in your head on how it could have been. Now looking back – after the allure of meeting a beautiful, put tougher, family is gone and intrigue of who they are, I realized that chances are when the day of that playdate would have come, I would have wanted to cancel, I am an introvert.

This does bring me to the bigger question though, how do you make friends? There isn’t Tinder, Grinder or Bumble for friends, and I am not sure what the uptake would be on those sites for a monogamous couple, with a baby looking for friends, and not nudge-nudge, wink-wink “friends”. My kid seems to be a people magnet, everywhere we go takes twice as long because of his need of being adored by strangers. Yesterday at the grocery store we actually had a crowd forming around us of seniors wanting to play with him, he loved it, I wanted to crawl into my bubble. Maybe like in the dating world he can be my wingman, although we might have to put down some ground rules on my type of friends, and then both my partner and I need to be sure that making new friends is something we want. It’s one thing to be a player in the dating world, but in the friendship world – that just seems like bad karma.