holla at your boy. it's astounding how much we pick up from hanging around people. words, skills, admiration, talent, knowledge. i feel like people have so much to teach me. not just mushy crappy life lessons but more concrete knowledge. like in how something works. breaking down an industry or sharing a perspective. giving me some scant insight into a field that i have no clue about. all the guys i hang out with, i learn so much from them. how to change the oil, how to till the soil, how to fix something or other. how to best set up a fish tank. how to cover up a wood floor that's been slightly damaged by fire. what's the difference between enthalpy and entropy. what's a dickfor. how to best light a match when faced with heavy wind. what's the best way to take care of such and such a task. just lots of general knowledge stuff that you don't personally know. or at least that i don't personally know.



i asked a guy friend once what the function of a guy friend was, what a friend is, what he hopes to be able to provide to his friends. and part of the answer was that he hoped that his talents, skills, knowledge could be accessed and shared with his people. that his base of powe and his personal interests would prove useful and interesting to the folk around him. and that if someone needed something within his realm of expertise, that he would be called upon.



and of course we go to all our friends for these types of things. and i don't want to exclude girls here because they are valuable too. but perhaps in different ways. some of them you go to for more emotional issues, or they have expertise in more "girly" things. i really hesitate to break it all down like that but let's not lie, girls know more about girl things, guys know more about guy things. there are exceptions of course. but don't roast me over the misogynistic campfire when i say that i feel like my boys just provide me with a disproportionate number of useful/useless yet absolutely essential knowledge.



all people are vaults but i feel that i am blessed in particular with a group of people around me (girls and guys) who just know shit. they know lots of shit. and it's nice to be engaged in learning from friends and watching them teach you. or to teach them about what you might know. it's also hilarious to bag on people and make fun of them when they suck at something. but that's loving isn't it? i feel like guys take to teaching well because most of the time you can be very straightforward with them and say "you suck, fix that, fix this, good." some girls i feel don't take the whole straightforwardness as well because they need some encouragement to get the gears going. eric talked a bit about really enjoying being a "coach" at times and it's really good for both ends i think, the coach and the students. you can never learn enough and learning from your friends is just the icing on the cake.