I was thinking recently that I really needed some new friends. That’s not to say that my current friend group is bad, but I’d like to expand my horizons. My current circle of friends is currently composed of a pothead, this goober Asian kid who has the worst opinions on the planet, and this guy who looks like Jeffery Dahmer. Then I have a few half-friends that I don’t really see outside of school.
Anyhow, the three I have now are decent enough, but none of them I would consider ideal, and it’s why I don’t really have a best friend, not that I’m into the habit of ranking friends. The pothead is alright enough, and I can comfortably talk to him. On an intellectual level, I can sometimes speak my mind to him, although I feel he only really gets half of it. Also, he has a lot more friends than I do, so we’re not particularly close. He’s more outgoing and crass than I am, so we don’t fit very well together.
The dumb Asian kid really annoys me because he never has anything to say yet speaks a hell of a lot anyway. He’s socially awkward, deeply insecure, afraid of girls, and his form of comedy is playing a meme on his phone loudly, like a middle schooler. It is a sad thing to see. I watch him squirm whenever he has a girl as his lab partner, and I want to knock him upside the head and tell him to stop being so awkward.
Sometimes, when I can get him to stop acting like a band kid, I talk to him on an intellectual level, but I don’t think he ever really understands what I’m saying. I’ll go on a three-minute rant about marijuana legalization and abortion rights and why I didn’t like a certain teacher and his feeble mind could only conjure up a four-word sentence that does not add to the conversation.
Dahmer, I think, is the only one that ever understands what I’m saying, so I do like him better than the other two. However, he has autism, though not to the point where he’s dysfunctional. You probably wouldn’t be able to tell after a conversation with him, and it’s only after months of being around the guy did I suspect he was on the spectrum. He’s normal most of the time, but sometimes he has his autistic freakouts which are pretty difficult to deal with. He’ll get upset over something dumb like us talking too loud and then do that hand-shaking thing, like they’re wet and he’s trying to dry them. When he has these freakouts, I get pretty annoyed and the only reason I don’t tell him to piss off is because that might make his freakout worse.
But when he’s normal, he actually gets what I’m saying, even if we have a lot of disagreements. We tried to make a movie last year, but whenever I suggested something he’d go like, “Um… no.” And then he’d suggest something I didn’t like and I’d say it was stupid and we argue about our creative visions and nothing would be done.
For example, he said he wanted the movie to start with an alarm going off and a person waking up. I told him that was cliched and overdone to death but he wouldn’t listen. Then I suggested my idea, which would start the movie in the middle of a conversation the protagonist was having, and he shoots it down. For whatever reason he was really insistent on the alarm clock thing. We never agreed on anything because we both believe in our artistic superiority. I think he’s a crap storyteller while he probably thinks he’s going to make a movie akin to the Godfather, which is totally asinine considering we’re just three teenagers with a camera.
There were actually three of us there making the movie, me, Dahmer, and the Asian kid, so you’d think the Asian kid would just vote on one and we’d have majority rule. But an emptyheaded kid like that has no opinions, especially on cinematography and storytelling, so he just sat there the whole time during our arguments. And when we’d ask for his suggestions he would have none.
So what I’ve been trying to do is find a likeminded intellectual such as yours truly. The issue is that I’ve been finding most of the kids in my school to be pretty emptyheaded, at least on the surface level. I expected this from the regular kids, but it’s the AP kids as well. That’s not to say that my classmates are dimwitted morons, just that a lot of them don’t ever think of things bigger than themselves, and the ones who do have something going on upstairs aren’t really going to advertise them as such. And it’s not feasible to make friends with every classmate and figure out which ones have ever had a thought outside of schoolwork.
A lot of people in high school are just too afraid to ever be real. Everything they say has to have some layer of sarcasm and irony, everything has to be a joke, and they can’t ever be genuine. That’s fine enough, but whenever I want to talk about something that means something to me, whether it be things I like, dislike, and what I think about everything, it irks me when they just try to brush it off by retreating into their fortress of sarcasm. You can’t even talk about how you like a certain book without people turning it into a joke. I’d like to hear about things that mean something to other people, but everyone is too insecure to ever be truthful about their passions and hobbies and deep hatreds.
This whole post has been a little nonsensical. And it’s stupid to expect anyone to open up to you. It’s a process that takes months or years even. I’m not going to try to explain what I mean because you either understand it or you don’t.