fu schnickens. do you think you are superior to all your friends? your first politically correct instinct might be to say "no way." but technically, most people do. or rather, some people do. why? because if you thought your friends were all superior to you, why would they have you hanging around? you may not be the smartest, the best looking, the most skilled, the most fun or the best athlete but chances are you are one of those things. if your friends were superior to you in every respect then you just become the leech, never contributing to anything except a warm body and large group discounts.



so if everyone thinks that they're superior to everyone else, how does a group of friends stay together? the answer is teamwork and individualized talents. our analogy is this. every super friend must think that they are the best super hero, that they are superior in their abilities and powers. you know superman thinks he's the shit. batman thinks he's better than superman. wonder woman knows she can do anything the men can do. the green lantern possesses the most powerful weapon in the universe -- except against the color yellow. heck, even hawkman and aquaman -- as weak as they are -- proved to be useful at times. and so this is how a group of ego tripping friends work, because there is little to no overlap of talents. do you think another sea creature controlling super hero would make it onto super friends? hell no, because that would be redundant. would they need another billionaire techy crime fighter? no way, batman would never vote him in.



and so, this is the way with friends.



if you were superior to somebody in every way, why would you even want to hang out with them? unless you were a coach or a mentor or given to wasting your time, what's the point? you can't learn anything from them, they aren't going to help you in anything, they can only make your life miserable. example: the wonder twins, totally useless except as comic relief and/or plot devices. one could even argue that the wonder twins were superior to all the other super friends for their comic relief so that they were allowed to hang around. but i won't argue that. there is a word for folk like the wonder twins: extraneous. if somebody doesn't have any added value, why let them be part of your team right? right.



on the flip side, hanging out with someone superior to you in all respects must be killer too. sure you get to name drop and be in the backgrounds of photos but aside from that your sense of self worth must be torn to bits. "anything i can do, he can do better." one way to prevent this type of apocalyptic ego drop is to carve out a niche for yourself or to convince yourself that you are indeed better than all your friends at something. "hey look! my egg hard boiled in eight minutes! that's faster than you hard boiled your egg! i'm the king of egg boiling! woohoo!" this is why guys are competing all the time, to establish dominance and rankings for every activity.



i think i should go now.