Friends Meeting Friends

Introduction

This post was written by me, Brandon Nolet, in the context that I just had a birthday party dinner with friends.

Groups of Friends

As I’m sure anyone over the age of 18 (depending on your experience) is aware, there are the different groups of friends that one has. One has their friends from back in high school, their friends from work, maybe their friends from a sports club they’re a part of, and so on.

These groups of friends usually have some overlap in interests, because they’re all friends with you. Largely, however, these groups of friends’ lives and interests diverge from each other. Your work friends don’t usually see you at your sports club events, and your high school friends don’t see you at work.

What if, though, you wanted to introduce these groups of friends to each other? What if you wanted to have a birthday party and invite friends from different groups of friends. I did just that, and suffice to say it went fine. But let’s talk about particularities.

Contexts

These friends of mine see me in different contexts. My work friends see me working, and we talk about work (aside from the average “what are you doing this weekend?” sort of thing), my public speaking club friend saw me public speaking, my high school friends, saw me in high school.

Oh, my parents were there too! That’s definitely another context. My parents are cool though, so that was probably the least of my worries.

Though all these people see me in different contexts, I think that because I don’t really change personality that much between the contexts I wouldn’t have to be worried about how these people will perceive me. I was moreso worried about how each other person would feel in the context of the party.

Introductions

I felt like I had a responsibility to provide the context required for a proper introduction and because some people had never heard of these other contexts (for example I met one of these friends at something called Toastmasters) that became a little cumbersome. As more people arrived, I feel like the introductions become more and more sloppy. However, I think the introductions went well enough that everyone knew how I knew/met each of the people at the party.

The Reality

I was mostly worried about how the friends would interact with each other. Would some of them be too shy to implicate themselves into conversations? Would some of them feel left out because they don’t know anyone else?

I did notice a bit of a lull here and there but for the most part, it seemed like everyone enjoyed themselves. Two friends really hit it off and one of those potentially will be getting a new job thanks to a referral from the other!

I was surprised, mostly, about how long we all ended up staying. We were there for four hours just chatting about whatever and when it all came to the end, I got a drive home and a nice chill session with my high school friend.

Conclusion

Not only was my actual birthday a fantastic day, my party was the icing on the cake and I had a fantastic time. Thank you for reading, this post is a little all over the place but so am I.