Am I Nine Again?!

OK, so here we have another rant - pointless, I know, but still. I feel in that sort of "ranty" mood. Remember school? Remember the complete crap that used to go on in the playground, the fun and games, offset by the mean, moody and spiteful kids do without realising it. My biggest "Ugh" thing was the "You're not my friend any more, because..." followed by some excuse. Because: You're friends with her; You didn't share your marbles; He said that you said that I said she smells; Because I've got a new best friend.

And on and on.

You would have thought that going through Senior School (High School), maybe College, University, Work - you'd have thought people would grow the hell up. Enough with the pettiness, out with the childishness, in with the mature, the fun.

But no.

Several years again, our "circle of friends" was stupid. We had people over every night, were out and about, socialising, hanging out and generally having fun. Then it hit the fan. IT, as in, SH. He stopped talking to ALL of us, because we all talked to Her. Him+Her (a couple) stoppe talking because we didn't talk to the previous He. Him, Him and Her stopped because She was Related to Him. Over the space of a year, we had to juggle people because everyone seemed to hate everyone else, and slowly, we gave up trying to be mediators.

When various friends started coupling up, moving in, having kids and what ever, that also did a strange thing. People stopped talking, and then assumed they weren't being spoken to because the other party had a mood with them. He wouldn't call them because They wouldn't call him. And so on.

When Bethany was discovered to be slightly interesting, it was like someone got a huge knife and cut away at swathes of our friends. People we considered friends literally vanished in the space of a month, breaking off all contact. Maybe they thought they were giving us space, maybe they thought we were diseased, but whatever - from that October, the circle got smaller. Well, that is, it got smaller in person, but I "met" everyone online, and soon the different chat lists filled up. When we lost Bethy, again people we knew disappeared, including a lot of those we knew online, from heart lists to game lists. They didn't know what to say, how to react, and kept their distance. I know I am partly to blame here too, because I stopped chatting to people online aside from a very small handful that I felt comfortable with, and slowly, things have resumed on the friend-front with my different chat programs filling up.

So, aside from that tangent, we move to the point of this post. People here are no different to how they were 20 years ago. At the moment, we have a slowly expanding circle of friends. At least, till yesterday we did, and for once, we're just third parties in all this and not directly involved - which makes a nice change. There's us, a couple of single mums, and two other couples. Of course, the couples have fallen out, and have told one of the single mums to make a choice. They got angry at one of them for socialising with the other couple and ignored them, so now she is upset as she can't please both parties. The rest of us got blanked and cold shouldered by both couples this morning, so it's back to being in the playground, with a Them and Us situation.

I mean, seriously, have I grown up only to find it's no different 20 years down the line?

This post has taken me forever to ramble through - sorry for the long windedness of it. I've had people spamming me on messengers all day! But you know what, it's not just a personal level. Inter-family feuds between siblings. Families detesting one another over some petty squabble generations before them. Football fans hate fans of opposing teams, to the point of killing one another. Towns hating other towns. Countries hating other countries. Heck, you can picture the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan as a giant playground. America hates them, and tells his friends to hate them too. So America and it's friend go and beat up those it hates. The flip side to this is the people they hate get in their friends, and they start to fight back. All you've achieved is a pointless scrap, but instead of getting detention, people are dying.

I hope the world learns to grow up before my kids are adults.

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5 Responses to “Am I Nine Again?!”

Anonymous said...

Don't you just love playground politics !

Anonymous said...

Then again maybe everyone should live by the oompah loompah code !!

Mark said...

Just to say they need to get over it lifes to bloody short "sheesh" just remind them freinds are the hardest to make but the easiest to loose or is it the other way round.....

debbie said...

You know what Dan, I have never really had that many friends in my life, at school i was the child who was picked on for not having the lastest gadget, right pair of trainers, and it still goes on today as you say, but I have one true friend from school who I see regulary and the rest are friends of Martins, we dont socialise that well do to them getting rat faced drunk and fights start even the wives, so rather stay at home.. but we can never help or advice everyone all of the time,, yep we try and all they can do is take it or leave it, if they leave the advice then you know about it at school, you get the cold should.. but who cares,, and sure as heck will be like it when Jaysens children go to school..

Dan said...

It just drives me nuts, but you can bet if we "take sides" in the coming weeks there will be a shift, and because we "took sides" we'll come out as the badguys.

We had similar problems at live roleplaying once too, and because people effectively took sides, the whole thing fell apart. Well done, morons.