4/20- A Happy Birthday With Bill & Laura

I will confess, I was nervous about how the social mixing was going to go with Todd, Bill, and Laura. What ensued was almost exactly what I was hoping would happen, but was afraid wouldn't. It took no time to get into a debate on social politics and Bill and Todd pressed into disagreement mode for the first part of the night. Slowly they came to the realization that they agreed with each other on quite a bit of what they were defending and preaching to each other. I know the night was enjoyable for Todd, I'm hoping the same was true for Bill and Laura. I think it was.

The strange thing about my friendship with them is that they are very much outside my other circle of friends. I met them in New York in my last year at school, and they were my escape route from film when I was having a hard time with my business partner and best friend, Dave. Essentially they proposed opening a business together when they moved to Denver so I jumped at the opportunity and fled there within a few weeks. In fact, that was the beginning of my road into coffee. The odd thing about this friendship is that Todd is the second of my friends to meet them after ten years, the first being Dave for about ten minutes. My sister also met them, but other than that they are a mysterious entity to the rest of my friends and family of whom they only hear.

The main point behind that whole shpiel was that they also bring a very contrasted view point to my attention. Both Bill and Laura themselves have very different view points to each other. Laura reminds me quite a bit of my mom in that she is a self made woman, in the same field oddly, and thrives on projects to work on. Bill loves his luxuries, studies, and theorizing. He doesn't shy from questioning things that don't make sense to him, and is open to receive foreign answers as long as they can be backed up. This has been much of our friendship of exploring our opposite ways of living.

There were a few things about this that I found fascinating that night when they treated Todd and I to dinner for my 33rd. The first was watching Todd fall into that exploration himself as he debated with Bill. The second was realizing how much of a control freak I am. I started seeing how on edge I was watching this debate unfold and thinking if I should try and change the conversation to avert the possibility of a clash. The moment I thought that I became upset with myself, since, when I met one of their friends nine years ago in Colorado, I had started broaching a controversial subject over dinner and was shut down as being inappropriate conversation, not by them, but by the friend. I was pissed then, and realizing that now I was the one thinking of quieting for niceties it exposed the control freak in me. I then began looking over how in the past few years I have manipulated who meets who of my scattered friends network based on who I thought would mesh with who. Bill and Laura being probably my most conservative of friends, they haven't met anyone else which, then stifles a possibly interesting exchange of view points. To my defense, though, they have generally been living in places like England, Israel, and DC where I hadn't really known anyone anyway.

Anyway, long story short we had another really good evening of thought provoking, in depth conversation; plus some South Park. As Todd mentioned in his post, I also tried to muddle through explaining the metaphysical angle, but did a crack pot job of it. I'm running off observations and theories right now, and to approach Bill on the subject I'll be needing empirical evidence, which is what I'm after for myself anyway.

Click here for Todd's perspective.