I have a friend (an extraordinary friend, as you will see) who uses an expression from time to time: “Things that make you go huh”. Something bizarre and inexplicable happens; I look at him; he looks at me; we shrug; he says, “Things that make you go huh”. Change subject.

Well, I have a thing that makes me go “huh”. I’m not really sure how to work myself into the topic. Maybe I’ll start with something that makes most of us go “huh”. Think of an unpopular person you know. This type of character seemed more prevalent in my public school years, but there are still some available. Maybe they stand too close, or spit on you when they talk, or never ever ask a question, or perhaps never even speak your name. Or in some other way, they just plain manage to be annoying. Everyone pretty much shuns them. So you look at them and say to yourself: don’t they realize that no one likes them? Why don’t they do something about it? Huh.

To summarize: they don’t. They can’t.

I have three basic kinds of friends. There are normal people, who in a reasonable amount of time figure out what I’m like and then begin to shun me like a loathsome bug. There are friends I haven’t known long, meaning that they haven’t yet had time to figure this out and take the appropriate steps. And last, there are extraordinary, gracious people, gifted in love, who are my friends anyway, even though they know me. I guess there is a fourth class, being people who *I* shun like a loathsome bug. There are more of these people than there ought to be, which strikes close to the root of the problem.

Metaphor time. I knew someone who was not a very good cook. She had an array of recipes and equipment. The recipes were followed in a capable, workmanlike way. The measurements were exact and everything was precise. The food was edible. My wife, by contrast, comes from a long line of natural cooks. They can take whatever is lying around, fling it about in disarray, ignore missing ingredients, and always emerge from a dust cloud with something fabulous. What’s up with that? Huh. It’s as though the first cook used the letter of the law, lacking the spirit, while my wife, having the spirit of the law, transcends the letter.

OK. I think I am a methodical, yeoman-like friend. I’ll show up when other people won’t. I’ll answer calls, and answer letters, and do all that stuff. And by middle age I’ve amassed enough evidence to reliably conclude that I’m a big failure. I use the letter because I lack the spirit. In contrast to my yeomanry, people I know and like, or would like to like, can carry on in what seems to me the most atrocious way. I’ll use a friend as an example, because by now I’m disgusted with him and don’t care if he were to read this and take offense. He was my best friend at one time. He moved away. I tried to stay in touch. I couldn’t get him on the phone. He would never call back, ever. I would write but he would rarely write back. I have a couple of responses to prove he’s alive, but even those are kind of odd and distant. The time before last that I saw him was when his mother died here in town. He needed help with the funeral so he called me. The last time I saw him was a freak occurrence- I ran into him in Sea-Tac. Turned out he was heading home from being in Spokane that weekend. He’d looked up a lot of friends but not me. I didn’t take offense but over time I began to feel a little wry. There was a little more contact, but still the same pattern. Eventually, enough was enough.

The thing is, I know he’s well-loved and certainly has ten friends for my every one. But as a friend, he acts like a rat, while I really try. So here I am, going: huh.

Go back to those unpopular people. I know several, still. They seem to have a lot more friends than I do. So even if they live next door for 5 years and never ever speak my name, or even if every conversation I have with them consists of me either talking or asking questions because they have never expressed the slightest interest in me, or even if they probably spit in everyone else’s face the way they spit in mine when they talk, even so, I say, whatever it is that I’m doing, is worse. I get glimpses of it but I still can’t really put my finger in what it is, much less fix it. But the topic here isn’t what a loser I am. It’s why everyone else can seem to me to be just as bad, without it mattering.

We have (had, I guess) good friends. We invited them to a New Year’s party, and they accepted. On New Year’s eve, however, they didn’t show up. We found out they stayed home by themselves. In fact, this happened with two sets of friends. Maybe something came up. Or maybe they are tired of associating with a loathsome bug. By now, I have to be careful not to discount that second possibility. Don’t you think a friend who stood you up for some reason would feel compelled to then reach out to you, to reassure you? You know, invite you over, get together with you, just to let you know it wasn’t about you? I’m still waiting. Believe me, they have a lot more friends than I do. So maybe they are just sick of associating with me (it isn’t the first time) (which is why I’m waiting). Or maybe what seems rude and abusive according to my letter of the law is no such thing according to the spirit everyone else has. They appear to get along fine with each other and everyone else. I can’t say why no one minds when they treat each other the way they treat me. They seem like freaks, to be honest. But the fact is, I’m the freak. Huh.

Need help moving next week?