Friends in low places

According to MySpace, I currently have 125 friends (Hobo Stu currently has 2223). Almost all of the people on my friends list are people that I know in real life, but I can't really say that they are all really my friends. A majority of them are casual acquaintances people I would wave to if I saw them on the street or perhaps invite to a party, but not people that I hang out with on a regular basis.

Most of my MySpace "friends" are people who add me and then we trade a few messages back and forth catching up on each other's lives before we both get bored and stop messaging each other all together. Only a select few are people that I correspond with regularly and actually consider to be real friends people who I deeply care about and know that I could count on if I ever needed to.

That's how it has always been for me in real life too (not that MySpace is by any means an accurate representation of real life) I have a select group of close friends and then a larger group of casual acquaintances that I run into socially.

Throughout my life, I've always made friends pretty easily. I was fairly active when I was in grade school and high school doing soccer, cub scouts, Odyssey of the Mind, theatre and radio and I made most of my friends through these activities. I would lose touch with many of these friends over the years (although many of them have found me on MySpace), but it seemed like a new crop of friends would spring up to replace the ones that moved away or ended up at a different school. Even once I graduated high school and gradually began losing touch with most of my drama friends, I began hanging out with the guys on my brother's roller hockey team.

But ever since I've moved from Maryland to Boston, it's like I have a blank slate as far as friends go. All of my old friends are several states away and when I moved here in December, the only person I knew in the city was my girlfriend. A few of my friends from Maryland have actually made their way up here for brief visits, but somehow I can't seem to convince all of my buddies to relocate to Boston with me. So, I'm now in a position where I need to make some new friends.

The problem is I'm not really sure how. As I mentioned, most of my friends have been made through activities I was involved in (or, in the case of my brother's hockey team, activities I was a spectator for). The problem is, these days there isn't really any activity I'm involved in. Most days, I'm perfectly happy to get home from work, pop in a movie from Netflix and lounge on the couch with my girlfriend. While this is certainly fun and it makes me very happy, it's not really the best way to meet new people.

I think deep down I am actually fairly antisocial. I am good with interacting with people one on one or in a small group, but I don't really enjoy large social gatherings. Even as a kid, I would always want to be invited to all of the other kids' birthday parties, but on the day of the event, I would beg my parents not to make me go. I would have my jacket on and my classmate's birthday present in hand and I would be pleading with my parents not to make me go to the party. Of course, they would always make me go and I would always end up having a good time, but it was definitely a challenge for me. I'm not sure if I have a touch of social anxiety or what, but I'm just not big on social gatherings. Unfortunately, this makes it harder to make new friends.

To their credit, my girlfriend's friends have all been great and they have done a spectacular job of making me feel like part of their inner circle. And while I get along with all of her friends very well, I still need to make some friends on my own. After all, it's kind of hard to vent about my girlfriend to a group of her friends (just kidding, honey, you know I love you).

So I'm left at a bit of a loss on how to meet new friends. I no longer have school or any extracurricular activities to fall back on. Sports are always a good way to make new friends, but I think my soccer playing days are officially behind me and I'm not really into the Red Sox or Patriots, which makes it hard to connect with the average Bostonian sports fan. Theatre has worked in the past, but I don't really have the time to commit to doing a play. I think I just need to pick a new activity to get involved in so that I can meet people through that, but I'm not really sure what activity that would be. Maybe I could take up bull-riding or start my own fight club.

Perhaps things would be easier if life worked like MySpace. Then, I wouldn't have to find big social gatherings to make new friends, I could simply cycle through people's profiles and superficially decide who I wanted to befriend. And anyone who turned out not to be cool could be removed discreetly.

Although, if life was like MySpace, most of these new friends would end up going on and on about their band or some shady business scam they wanted to involve me in or they would just spend hours answering questions about themselves aloud. And the especially clingy ones would constantly pester me to comment on how wonderful they are.

On second thought, it's a good thing real life is nothing like MySpace.

This weekend, I'm heading back to Maryland for a few days and I'm going to get a chance to see a few of my old friends while I'm in town. I'm really looking forward to it. Now I just need to figure out a way to stuff them all into my duffle bag so that I can smuggle them back to Boston with me.

Random Thought of the Week:
So apparently, we are arming robots with tasers now.

With the way George Bush is running the country, I just assumed that we would all die in World War III, but it's nice to see that a killer robot doomsday scenario is still in the running.

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He also has some really hot friends. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.