Friends.

I've been thinking a lot about friendships lately. I'm guessing the best friendships, like marriages, are when everyone has the same idea about what it takes to be a friend or a spouse. In most relationships, there seems to be a giver and a taker. For some, that's going to work out perfectly, for others not at all. Whenever my birthday rolls around and I try to decide what to do, I'm generally at a loss. A birthday two days before the 4th of July in a state where everyone runs off to a cabin, I have to admit, gets very depressing. I'm probably a rarity in the fact that I'm okay getting older. I'm turning 29 tomorrow, yet I got carded for a rated R movie a few months ago. Yes, that was a bit extreme, but it's also a rare day that I don't get carded at all. 2 years ago in Vegas, the bouncers were taking bets as to how young I was before they carded me. As per usual, I was much older than they were expecting. I'll probably have an issue aging once I get to the point when I look my age, or worse, people think I'm older. In the meantime, aging is fine with me. My problem always lies in trying to get others to celebrate my aging. Most of my high school friends have moved out of state. Transferring colleges left me with out a big group of college friends. I became friends with a lot of my co-workers after college, but many of them have moved to other cities now. So, I'm left trying to gather those that I can over a long holiday weekend when everyone would prefer to be at a cabin. I try not to dwell on the fact that my in-town friend group is dwindling, but on days like my birthday, it gets a little hard to forget it.