brush that bird off your shoulder. just like you have a place for your things, you need a place for your friends. this is a very different concept from putting your friends in their place. that's a very mean thing to do, although sometimes necessary. however, putting your friends in a specific place is always a necessity. i've already discussed the value of having a consistent place to put your wallet, your keys, your ipod. you know where to find them, they know where to be found. it's an efficient, if not overly ingenious, system.



a better analogy is perhaps sports. yes, it always comes down to sports or movies, that's just the way my world works. sorry. anyway, in our lives, each friend fills a particular niche. some friends are good to talk to, some are good to hang out with, some provide intellectual stimulation, some provide free food, some teach you things, some aggravate you, some understand you, some withstand you, some friends are useful for certain activities but useless everywhere else, some friends provide transportation or advice; basically, each friend does something different. much like individuals on a football team.



and like any good football team, you need to have depth at your "positions." having only one friend you can consistently go shoot the shit with is extremely dangerous. if he/she goes down, your team is suffering at that position and you are left with a big gaping hole in your life. in the same vein, maybe you have too many friends who are log jammed at one position. if life were really like sports, you could trade away a position of strength to bring in a player who covers a weakness. "okay, i'll give you my friend brian, who's good for clubbing and meeting girls, for your friend gina, who's good at listening and being empathic. do we have a deal?"



but this does not happen in real life. at least not this directly. instead what you have is the slow acquisition of friends of friends, who may slowly fulfill your invidual team needs. also, let me point out that not every personal friend need requires fulfillment. some people are comfortable with not having friends for a certain niche. you don't necessarily need both a running and passing game to succeed. if you are the type of person who revels in hanging out by yourself, you wouldn't need too many friends to hang out with. that's a wonderful and beautiful thing. the key to this entire system is identifying a friend strategy, identifying how you want to "win" in life and then sticking to that plan.



skeptics of this analogy might say, "but what about friends that fulfill multiple needs? don't they make your positional theory irrelevant?" no it doesn't. because the game of friends does not have strict rules for minimum or maximum number of roster positions. for example, you could be playing the equivalent of friend basketball (twelve players/friends to a team), you could be playing friend football (fifty plus players per team), or you could be playing mixed friend doubles (just one teammate of the opposite sex). whatever friend sport it is that you're playing, just make sure to have enough depth to not be left high and dry.



friends will also vary in importance and ability. some "best friend" types will be franchise players, capable of fulfilling many needs at once. these are the cornerstones of your friend franchise, you've built your friends circle around them. but aside from your stars and superstars, you'll also probably have some specialists (a friend whom you call for car advice), role players (a friend to watch sappy movies with perhaps), and your bench players (you know what these are, the backups). you'll might also have the flakey friend who seems like they would be great but their talent never quite matches up to their production -- the ubiquitous "full of potential" player. and sometimes, a new friend will give you something totally unexpected (like someone who inspires you to start surfing and fulfills a niche you never knew you had open) and suddenly your team has an added dimension to it. the point is, friends have roles depending on their abilities and talents and you should be aware of what positions you have assigned your friends -- consciously or unconsciously.



this analogy could really go on forever but i'll stop here, for your sake and mine. i suggest we all make lists and define who fulfills what in our lives. then we can commence actually trading friends around so that we can all be shiny happy people with no friend holes in our lives. because really, what could be worse than having friend holes? we might even want to go so far as to make it a collectible card trading game with pictures on the front and stats on the back. i've lost you, i feel it.



oh it's james' birthday today. he's a franchise type player on the right team, anybody want to trade me for him?