Head Tale

In last week’s post, I said your parents are your first formative influence who give you so many of your basic life lessons and core moral code.

If that’s the case, I feel like your friends are the ones who exist to test, question and expand that moral code as you grow.  Your friends are the ones who you have playground conversations with where you learn everything from the truth about Santa to facts about sex (well, “facts” in quotation marks might be more accurate!) to all-night discussions about the deepest philosophical questions.

The photo above, taken last fall at the funeral of the brother of a former classmate who was a year older than my grade.  A few friends had decided to drive out to Indian Head for the funeral to support our classmate after her brother had died suddenly.

In this photo, there is:
* the friend who was born two days after I was, spent time in the same nursery at the hospital with me and is therefore technically my oldest friend in the world
* the friend who stood up with me at my wedding (uhm, my third one.  My cousin stood up with me at our very small legal wedding in Calgary, my dad stood up with me at our small “ceremony” wedding in Mexico.  But it was one of my best friends who stood up at our “party” wedding back in front of a couple hundred people back in Saskatchewan!)
* the friend who matched my early interest in computers and technology and was one of the first people who introduced me to BBS’s (Bulletin Board Systems) which were an early conduit to the Internet (that friend also met his wife online, long before dating sites were a thing!)
* the friend who challenged me more than anyone growing up in a variety of ways.  He challenged me physically as he was the person who taught me to ride a bike.  When he was fighting another friend and winning, said “Who’s the toughest?”.  The person he was beating on said “You are!” and he replied, “No, Hammond is!” because at the time (grade one?), I could still take him!).  He also challenged me mentally and is the person who I credit to this day for making me an atheist and giving me my science-based, skeptical view of the world.
* the friend who was the daredevil and most likely to take risks – jumping off roofs, driving too fast, etc. which helped me define my own limits.

This is a snapshot (literally!) summary of the influence of some of the friends I’ve known since kindergarten (or longer) but I have friends from throughout elementary school, high school, university (both undergrad and grad school) and since then who I may not see as as often as when we used to regularly share space in a classroom or dorms or whatever.

But those people continue to influence me in so many ways – from books I read to changing my core ideas of how I view the world (as I’m obviously a very different person now than I was at 10 or 20 or 30.)

Social media has been a factor in how I’m able to keep up with this wide range of friends but there’s an unfortunate flip side – friends who I used to hang out with, have sleepovers with and tell my darkest secrets to – are now online sharing ideas I fundamentally disagree with – how much they hate Justin Trudeau (I mean, I’m not a fan but some folks have a visceral hatred that’s alarming) to out and out racism.

On one hand, I get it – that’s the environment we all came out of and their influences have shaped them differently than mine (that’s part of why I’m doing this series – how come I turned out to be this progressive-minded, NDP-supporting librarian and one of my best friends growing up is an anti-immigrant conservative???)

Anyhow, wherever our personal journeys take us, there’s no denying the massive influence your friends – especially in your earliest years but continuing on through your life – play on who you are and how you see the world.