My Friend

I recently realized that I use some variation of "my friend" quite a bit when writing. I don't refer to people by name, even when the whole point of the post is to describe that particular person. Sure, I refer to my brother and sister plenty of times, but unless you've actually met them, you don't know their names. Most of the time, the names themselves don't really matter, anyway. The humor of the stories is always in the situation or in the words that were said.

I'm not going to lie, there are times when including the name would add some juicy bit of gossip to the mix. If a particular story involves a woman I'm romantically interested in or a person I don't particularly care for, it suddenly takes on a little je ne sais quois. I'll bet it would add an extra bit of humor here and there, but it's not worth it. I'm not trying to feed the rumor mill, and I'm giving you permission to hit me upside the head if I start that. Besides, I'm lazy, and it's easier to type "friend" than "some acquaintance that I kinda sorta see every now and again."

Well, motivations aside, I realized that I used this phrase quite a bit thanks to a friend of mine (see, not telling you any names). We were having lunch, and she asked a fairly innocent question: she asked if someone I had just mentioned was the same friend as someone from one of these posts. Clearly, she had been paying attention. It wasn't the same friend, but after a moment, she realized that she didn't know that person's name. Upon further reflection, she realized she didn't know the names of any of the friends in the story. A moment of thought after that, she accused me of doing it intentionally. What was I trying to do, play it cool and mysterious?

So, she took what she undoubtedly saw as her only option: she grilled me. I'm not entirely sure if it was just the curiosity getting the better of her, or if she was trying to be funny, but she went down the list. Okay, so "Litmus Test" was actually W, and the friend who I traveled with during the "Dessert" trip was X. The friend who called me the "Communal Garbage Disposal" was Y, and the friend who I raced to leave work one afternoon was Z. Heck, she even pulled in a few previous conversations that we'd had, and made sure to correlate those with this new-found information. Whatever her reasons were for starting, it was a complete and thorough grilling.

I couldn't even make it through the whole conversation without laughing. The fact that writing about anonymous friends ended up with me spilling my guts, combined with someone taking full advantage of my "life is an open book" policy, was too amusing to keep a straight face. On the bright side, if I ever get amnesia, there's at least one person who I can count on to provide all of the gory details.