This Is about Money and Friend$

Hello there friends and foes. It's been a lil minute, hasn't it?

There are roughly 8 topics floating through my brain's atmosphere that I'd like to discuss at some point, but I know it's most effective to do things one at a time. I hope you can excuse my 2 month hiatus. I was studying for the LSAT -__-

So anyway, I visited a few friends in Boston a few weeks ago and this phrase came up: "Money is awkward between friends." 

To be more specific, the phrase was said by this friend. Hi Pat. =)

Sometimes I marvel at how influential these pieces of paper can be. Money can make you feel powerful, inferior, comfortable, nervous, limitless, or stuck. I guess it all depends on how much you have and how much you think you need.

Before I had my first real job, before I had my first joke job, before I had a bank account, before I received an allowance, I could see simple differences between people who had more money and those who had less. More specifically I was sensitive to people who had more money than me. The appropriate term here would technically be "wealth" but I didn't know what that was when I was little. Or perhaps I was using visual cues to discern socioeconomic levels, but again, I didn't know what that was as a kid. I just knew money was involved.

I remember my first play date with a new friend at my new school. I was seven. I remember wondering if we'd get lost in her house. I remember thinking her house would come to an end, but she just kept taking me into new rooms to play with something else. I knew that her parents had impressive jobs, and impressive jobs dole out impressive money, and impressive money means you get yourself a big, big house.

Sadly, one of the most potent memories I have from that day is the shame that set in when my friend and her mom dropped me back at my house. We had just moved into that house maybe a few months before, and on any other day, I was in love with it. But on that day, I was nervous that my friend and her mom would think less of me and my parents because our house wasn't as big as theirs. I'm not sure where I got this notion, because kids aren't supposed to think about stuff like that. They're supposed to be carefree and innocent, but there I was thinking this girl would judge me because we weren't in the same socioeconomic class.

Thoughts like that continued throughout my time at my small private all girls' school. My parents worked extremely hard to get me there. Clearly now I have a better idea of the sacrifices they made, but even then I knew that it was something to be grateful for. From my observation, that often seemed to be a difference between the kids that received financial aid and those that didn't. Receiving financial aid and having my parents work so hard for me to have such an exemplary education, I was grateful to be there, for some students, this was just the norm, they were just going to school. There were times when I slipped into that mind frame. You get used to certain things when you're exposed to them at age 6.

Even though I could make connections about my family's financial situation. I was a still a child, and wanted everything my friends had. Let's be real, as a teenager I wanted everything my friends had, and even still as adult, that hasn't really changed.

One of the biggest money related concepts that I had (and still have) a hard time wrapping my head around was having access to a parent's credit card. That is access that I have never had and never will have. Although, I have often been a beneficiary of said cards, through my friends, getting a free meal here and there. The first couple of times in high school when I first heard my friends say "Oh, it's on Bruce tonight" (I intentionally picked a random name, I hope,) I was just so baffled. To my understanding, these cards are typically intended for "emergency use only." I guess sometimes buffalo chicken wings are an emergency. That wasn't even sarcasm. I mean, okay, technically it was, but real talk, we've all been there.

Please don't think I'm playing some pity card here. My family lives a comfortable middle class American life, but I've just always been hyper-aware of my economic status in relation to my peers. I worked every semester of college, so I could afford (most of the time) to participate in the activities of my social group. For some of my friends, working was more of a choice, not a necessity. Unfortunately, food and alcohol are not free. That's what college students spend their money on. That hasn't really changed, except now add student loans to the mix (kill me).

Now, things get a little tricky when money is exchanged. What I was talking about before, that's all personal, and how you decided to feel about your socioeconomic status effecting how you feel in relation to your friends, that's mostly your choice. But sometimes these little scenarios pop up and it just so damn uncomfortable.

DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING SCENARIOS ARE VARIOUS ENCOUNTERS THAT HAVE OCCURRED MORE TIMES THAN I CAN COUNT, MERGED INTO 3 LITTLE DITTIES (REFERENCES STARTING WAY BACK IN MIDDLE SCHOOL WHEN WE WERE FIRST ALLOWED TO GO TO THE MALL BY OURSELVES AND SPEND THE MONEY OUR PARENTS GAVE US.) I'M WRITING THIS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE I DON'T WANT ANYONE TO READ THIS AND SAY "OH SNAP, I TOTALLY OWE EKAETTE $6, DOES SHE HATE ME?" NO I DON'T HATE YOU.

Moving on to the ditties....

When you buy something for your friend that costs $7 and he gives you $5, is it petty to tell him that he still owes you $2? What if you can see that there is more cash in his wallet, but oh maybe he doesn't have any smaller bills? In that moment, if you're like me (poor, trying to save money to buy a car/trying to save up money for law school) all those $2 deficits start to add up. But it's just $2 so you tell yourself to get over it. But clearly since I'm writing about it... looks like I'm not over it? Oops. It's just like I feel like I'm being challenged. I don't hang around anyone who can't read numbers (no slow pokes on my team) so when someone gives me the wrong dollar amount, it's just like are you guessing how much you owe me... because if you didn't know, I assume you would ask. So the alternative is, you think this smaller amount is "good enough." It is only "good enough" if the person who you're giving the money to says "oh five is good." Don't assume. Also, if you only have five bucks... tell your friend you only have five bucks instead of making this awkward scenario happen. Sorry I'm a Taurus, I'm pretty sure being protective over finances is one of our traits. Or maybe I just made that up, but I feel like I've read that...

What about when you order food, but your friend doesn't, and then food comes to the table looking and smelling so gloriously delicious. And then your friend looks so, so sad, so you give her a piece. And in your head you say, "you know what, that's on me." And even though you say it in your head, it's understood by your friend. She's not going to give you $3 for eating a quarter of your entree that you probably shouldn't eat all of anyway because portion size in this country is out of control, so technically she's helping you evade obesity. But then your friend is like "damnnnn, this is wonderful," and she doesn't make eye contact with you while she's telling you her new creepy co-worker who sports a foot long man-ponytail because she's staring at your food. So then your friend eats half of your plate. Literally. The check comes. She only pays for her diet coke. That's awkward right? Now you have a choice to make. If you happen to be spending more time with her doing things that will cost money, perhaps your move at this later venture is to say, "Oh you got me, since you ate half of my calzone, right?" And then your friend can't really say no... because she's your friend and she ate half of your calzone. But if you were just meeting a friend you don't see very often, and she claimed she wasn't hungry, but then she smashed on your calzone, you gotta buck up, face the awkwardness and tell her she's gotta throw down some more dollars.

Then we have the moochers. The friend that never has cash when you take a cab and says he'll buy you a drink later but never does. The friend that asks if you can have a slice of your pizza but before you know it 4 slices are gone. If you are a moocher, your friends will figure that out about you, and they will treat you as such. I'm kind of treating this paragraph like a PSA, because I genuinely believe most moochers feel that they are existing undetected. Just know that if you cause your friend to pay $10 for a cab when they only owed $3, he's probably going to hate you for a little bit. Not forever, unless you're friends with horrible people, but definitely for a little bit. Do you want people to hate you for a little bit? Probably not. Go to the ATM before you venture out with your friends, that is part of adulthood. And if you forgot, apologize, and make a point to pay for the first round, it's only right.

This post started out a bit more seriously and then I digressed, I think I actually do that a lot... sorry, hope you're still following. So here's my perspective about being on the other side of the dollar. By other side of the dollar, I mean to say being the person who owes, not sure if that was clear. Sometimes, your friends cover you, because they know you're poor, maybe poorer than them at the moment, and they're being nice. I think we find things like this so "touching" because you feel loved when someone is willing to part with a certain amount of money just for you. I know... It's the thought that counts, the reasoning behind it, the end goal blah blah. But I think a part of you is thinking, "Wow they were willing to let that precious currency go, just for little old me? I must be special!" But then what if you can't afford to pay them back. They say it's okay, and they sincerely mean that, but you don't want to the pity case. So then you have that whole dilemma.

So the awkwardness is seemingly inescapable. Some people subscribe to "it's only awkward if you make it awkward." That would be true if you were alone on the earth and there was no other living creature. Someone else can make it awkward, quite easily. I don't understand why that phrase exists. I also despise people that say "I never feel awkward." That's just a lie and you trying to make people think you're cool. If you have to try to make people think you're cool, then you're most likely the worst, so just shut it. And if you are reading this thinking that I'm a hypocrite because you've heard me say "I'm not an awkward person," I still stand by that statement. There is a difference between those assertions, I promise.

I was recently talking to someone about what my goal is with this blog. Simply stated, sometimes I have some thoughts in the ole noggin, and I wonder if people have thought about it too, but if not maybe they will after reading. This is also such a gratifying outlet because sometimes people actually read and appreciate what I write and then they want to talk to me about it! I can't even describe how ridiculously happy that makes me. Also, I haven't forgotten that I have yet to write about AmeriCorps. The anniversary of the day I escaped Iowa and returned to my precious Baltimore soil is fast approaching (December 10th) so I think that's when I'll write that little expose (I can't remember how to type in accents on a PC so just read that the way you know it should be read.) Remember when "ttfn" was a way we would say good bye on AIM? If you don't, the translation is: ta ta for now. Jokes on jokes. Bye.