Last month, Em and I had a serious talk about the lack of friends in my life besides her and the ones I met through her, i.e. people she works with. While there are three people she works with specifically that I would call my friend, we’re still not very close, and Em thinks I should go interact more with people and make a few friends for myself. In comes Speed Friending, an event held by one of my local libraries where people bring books and chat about books with each other for five minutes at a time, whilst eating store-bought cookies. The page on their website said to bring your favorite book. Well, that’s a preposterous request, because who has only ONE favorite book? So, naturally, I took four.
* Jane Eyre
* A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
* The Last Summer (of You and Me) by Ann Brashares
and
*Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (to represent the entirety of the series, because to take seven books, along with these first three would’ve been just ridiculous; plus, I didn’t have any room in my bag).
When I first walked in, I felt awkward. In fact, I almost backed out before even walking into the room. I knew it was the one I needed to be in, but when I saw all those people I started to flip out a little (inwardly, though). There was a short guy walking by the door, and a lady with a red top spotted me as I pretended to thumb through something on my phone. “Are you here for speed friending?” she asked, walking out of the room. “Is this the room?” I asked, pointing to the door. “Yeah, come on in and we’ll get you signed in.” So, in I followed. I signed in on an iPad, which was pretty cool, and she gave me a cut-out of an orange paper goat with the number thirteen written on it. I walked over to the table to get my “score card,” which was only a piece of paper where you wrote down the numbers of the people you talked to, and indicate with a check in the “yes or no” box whether or not you wanted to continue talking with them afterward. At first, I tried to hand the guy behind the table my goat – although, why I do not know. Obviously, I needed the goat so people could identify me. “Oh, would you like to write your name down on your tag?” he asked. I laughed, “Yes, I guess I would need to, wouldn’t I?” “Sorry,” he said, “I should’ve said something earlier.” No, no, I wanted to tell him. I’m the one acting like the idiot, here. (You see how it is with me in social situations? Oy.)
The first girl I talked to (we’ll call her Folk Tales, because she brought a book of folk tales), was lanky with dark hair. Her eyes were the largest part of her face, and there was a faint mustache growing across her upper lip, but very faint. She was married and worked with children, and had never read Harry Potter. “This is an outrage!” I cried. Just kidding, but I was thinking it. She said she read the first book a few years ago and felt like it was talking down to the reader, which made me wonder if I should feel a little insulted, considering I never felt talked down to while reading The Sorcerer’s Stone. In fact, I felt its narrative fit the characters it talked about, and that perhaps J.K. Rowling wrote it that way because we were being taken to a completely different world we knew absolutely nothing about, so in order to understand it thoroughly she had to describe things in a way that would be simple for both young and old, imaginative and not-so-imaginative people to grasp. Of course, I didn’t say all this. I didn’t want to make a bad first impression by being argumentative, of course.
The second two ladies were elderly African-Americans, Obscure and Bean. Obscure was short and round. She had freckles on her cheeks and laughed at almost everything I said, even when I wasn’t trying to be funny. “What kind of books do you like?” she asked. “Well, I can read across the board. Fantasy, but not vampires and werewolves, I’m over that. I like Harry Potter, it’s one of the books I brought with me tonight. I can read young adult, and I also like literary novels, and WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING AT ME?!” Okay, so I didn’t say that last part. When she laughed, she looked down to her left and clamped her lips together as though she might emit a snort, but one never came, just a soft, gulping chuckle. “You make me laugh, Lauren,” she said. “Thanks.” I didn’t know whether to smile or not. Bean, on the other hand, was not mysterious about her personality at all. She told me her mother had dementia, and she never knew what she was going to get with her. So I told her about Dr. Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds, and how his mother didn’t have dementia but Schizophrenia, and that he would sometimes go to visit her and she would be treating him like the ten year old he was when she was a professor. She also told me that she based her home on where the library was, and that she would most likely put her house on the market, because they closed her local library down and dispersed her librarians around the state. She is not impressed by digital books. “I want something I can touch,” she said.
The fourth person I talked to worked with the university. I’ll call her Elusive, because the whole time her face looked stiff, even when she was smiling. She reminded me of an American Lit professor of mine from sophomore year. Her forehead and cheeks were wide, and her eyes were a steely blue. I told her how I felt frustrated with The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, and that I couldn’t figure out if I liked the main character or not. She said she felt the same way with the book One Day, and flat-out hated the leading male character. She brought with her Faithful Place by Tana French, and recommended that I read the first in the series, In The Woods. Since I bought the book a couple years ago, and it’s just been sitting patiently in my bookshelf amid thousands of other books (okay, maybe hundreds), I decided to make it the next read from my collection at her request.
The fifth person I talked to was a girl who I will call Preston, because it turns out we both lived in the Preston dorm on campus. She wore a cute black dress with a wide, garnet belt around her waist. Of everyone I talked to I got along with her best. Her smile made her face, and she wore it like a garment. She favored my first-year English professor, Ms. Nobles, whose smile is also one of the most memorable things about her. The only guys I talked to were at the end of the meeting. The first one, Nerves, had stiff fingers that whitened at the knuckles. He moved his hands around like a claw as he talked. He seemed to be a nerd in disguise. He almost had me fooled with his fitted white t-shirt and washed out jeans. Of course, I’m not one to judge nerds, as I’m a nerd myself. Just bring up Harry Potter around me and it’s quite obvious which clique I would’ve belonged to in high school had we actually had cliques.
Lastly, was a guy who pulled me aside after the meeting had ended. He wore a chunky black earring in his left ear and baggy clothes. He said he wanted to talk to me because I looked interesting. “Your dress is bright and unique.” Bright being the common complimentary word used to describe my dress that day. He made the fourth or fifth person to comment on it. It was blue with a pattern of golden elephants. My mom bought it for me in New York, and it was the first time I’d worn it. When I told him this he said, “Well, when you wear interesting clothes you have to expect people to notice you.” I almost said that I’m not used to being noticed, but I didn’t want to further that part of the conversation. We sat down and talked somewhat about our families, I more than he. He was less forthcoming than I was about himself, but that could be because when I get put on the spot like that I ramble aimlessly about too many things using too many details. I even told him the name of the community I grew up in. Stop! I thought to myself. For all you know, he pulled you aside to scope out his next murder victim! He said that he wouldn’t consider himself spiritual and that he didn’t know what he believed. I came right out and said that I was a Christian, although I did admit to not feeling all that comfortable in churches. “They kind of intimidate me,” I said. I was going to say that I prefer empty churches, even though I’ve never had the chance to just walk in an empty church and pray, but I didn’t get to insert that into conversation.
After about five minutes, one of his friends came over to collect him. It turned out to be an ex-customer of ours at the bank. I say ex, because she’d spent a fair amount of her time cussing out my co-workers and threw her ID in my face once. Okay, well not directly INTO my face, but she tossed it at me with an evil glare, so I gave her my “Don’t mess with me look.” I’m surprised she proceeded to invite me out with them, considering she had a lot to say about my rudeness the day I asked for her ID because I’d never seen her before in my life. I’d spent the entire night trying to avoid her, and I was not about to go spend an evening with someone who didn’t show any recollection that we’d had professional differences in the past. Anyway, Ringo declined the offer for me when she suggested it, which I thought was odd.
I set my glass of water on the table and turned in my score card. During the break, there had been a book laid out that I wanted to check out. It was The Sportswriter by Richard Ford. The guy who had been behind the front table at the beginning of the meeting told me it was good – sad, but funny. He had curly hair and a gentle smile. Talking to him, he seemed like the kind of person I could spend hours talking with about books. “So, you’re gonna check it out?” he asked. “Yeah, it seemed like it would be really interesting.” “Good, I hope you enjoy it. I think the sequel won the Pulitzer Prize.” I thanked him for the recommendation and left. On the way out, Ringo looked up and told me goodbye. I waved and made my way back up the escalators. At the check-out desk, stood two older clams. I call them clams, because they were jolly fellas. “Is that a horse?” one of them asked. I looked down, thinking he was talking about my elephants, but he pointed to my name tag. “Oh, no, it’s a goat. I was at the speed friending event. I forgot I still had it on.” “Oh, how did that go?” the other man asked. “It was interesting. I met a lot of nice people.” “Well, that’s good! Hope you enjoy your book, and you have a good day.”
I almost felt overwhelmed with how friendly everyone had been. Of course, it had been a night to make friends. I would definitely do it again. I almost didn’t go, though. I was having a mental battle with myself over it. Part of me said, “You should go, have a new experience, meet some people, maybe – gee, I don’t know – make a friend,” while the other part of me said, “Yeah, but don’t you just want to curl up on the couch with some chips and watch Harry Potter?” Trust me, friends, I came close to giving into the latter. However, I am proud of myself for going to the speed friending event instead. Harry, old chap, I love you, but I do need to put myself out there a little more. As much as I love your friends and your magical ways, I do need to go make a few of my own. And, you know what? I was awkward, but I had fun. My awkwardness is actually something I’ve come to like about myself. It’s just part of who I am. And I’m okay with that.
