Friends

So yesterday I went to dinner with some new friends from work, and glibly confessed my aspirations to someday have a family and a house in the suburbs, and my worries that I'm not going to get there doing environmental work. I always fall into the trap of assuming that because people are treating me warmly and like I've known them for years, that I can relax and be open with them. Like I've already passed the test. But - Erin! You have not passed! This IS the test, going on right now! So I say things like that and the mood turns against me, almost like a temperature change. And I suddenly realize I'm not in the company of bosom buddies, at all, and that I just shot myself in the foot, and from now on there's always going to be a kind of frosty reserve in their eyes when they speak to me.

Yesterday my downfall started when someone asked if I partied a lot in college, and I said that I hardly ever went out, that I wasn't very cool in college, and then someone else asked what kind of music I liked, and I said that lately I've been enjoying classical (strike two), and then I wrapped it up with my confessions about the suburbs, after which there was a poignant pause and then someone said, "I'm really anti-all that. It's so terrible, environmentally. That's not how I would ever choose to live." Which was when I suddenly woke up and realized these weren't my friends, at least not yet, and perhaps now wouldn't ever be. The thing is, they're nice people. But you do have to keep up a facade of coolness as you get to know new people, and say what they want to hear, and later after they've decided you're in, you get to be yourself. I know that. I just forget to do it.