Category: Personality

I Wish All My Family and Friends Blogged, I Wish Everyone Blogged

by James Wallace Harris, 7/16/23

What if everyone who ever lived kept an indestructible diary. Imagine reading what all our ancestors thought throughout their lifetimes. I don’t believe in an afterlife, but this could be the form of one. I’ve often wondered what my parents thought as they were growing up and got older. I’ve also wondered about my grandparents and what they thought about their lives. If they had written down their thoughts and were saved in some way, I could read them now. I wish I had a magic lamp and three wishes. This is how I’d use one of them.

I’ve always been somewhat interested in genealogy. However, just seeing names with dates of birth and death isn’t good enough. Whenever I see a genealogy chart I ask: Who were they, what did they think, what did they do?

The past is gone, so we can’t worry about that now. Although I have read accounts of people wanting to program an AI based on everything they could find out about someone they loved who died. The theory is if we programmed everything we know about a person, say Mark Twain or Ernest Hemingway into an AI, it might act like those men. That sounds creepy. On the other hand, one of my favorite science fiction stories, “Appearance of Life” by Brian W. Aldiss involved the protagonist finding memory cubes by two people who had been married and died years apart and putting them on a shelf so they talked to each other. It was both moving, tragic, and pathetic all at once.

Reading books by famous writers and biographies about them does convey a sense of who they were and how they reacted to their times. And biographies about famous people who left no writings of their own lack something. Look at the four Gospels — if only Jesus had written something himself.

Blogging offers the potential to do what I’m talking about. What if the Library of Congress archived all blogs. Would people in the 22nd century find our blogs interesting? What about the 43rd century?

If you pay attention to serious fiction and films, much of the trouble conveyed about the characters and interactions with other characters is due to a lack of communication. A good example is Celeste Ng’s first novel, Everything I Never Told You. Think about every person you ever loved, hated, or worked with, and what it would mean if you read their inner thoughts? Or at least the thoughts they wanted to share?

Also, it’s important to know that our thoughts are not coherent. Writing is the way we learn this. You’ll never know yourself only by thinking. Writing is a way to sculpt thoughts into something recognizable. Writing is the way to learn about yourself, and reading is the way to learn about other people.

Remember being back in school and all the emotional turmoil and conflicts caused by relationships, perceived relationships, and lack of relationships? Would we have been better people, kinder people, more self-aware people, if we had all blogged back then and read each others’ thoughts? Weren’t a lot of our problems as kids because we hid inside of ourselves and only speculated about our classmates? Would there be more or less school shootings if all the kids knew each other better?

Not only would growing up blogging help with self-expression, and communication, but it would have made us better learners and scholars. I’ve already written about “Blogging in the Classroom.”

I also wrote, “77 Things I Learned From Writing 1000 Blog Essays” which was mostly about how blogging is a great self-improvement tool. One of the main reasons I blog is it helps keep my mind together.

But I mostly wish everyone I knew blogged so I could learn more about them. Lately, I’ve been noticing how little we really communicate with one another. We have our public persona, and we hide the rest. I’ve noticed how many people as they grow older withdraw into themselves. We tend to just chat. Is that because we have given up on relationships? Or because we have more worries about ourselves and don’t want to worry about other people?

For some reason, we consume fiction hours a day. And it’s not the kind of fiction where we learn about people. It’s the kind that helps us forget and hide. Wouldn’t our lives be better if we learned more about real people and not imaginary people?

On the other hand, we are bombarded with personal problems and information overload every day. Maybe we watch television because we had enough of reality and real people? Even extroverts who crave constant social activity often stay at a shallow level of communication. Could the fact that we don’t all blog, or communicate deeply imply that’s what we prefer?

JWH

The Return of Edward Czlapinski

by James Wallace Harris, 7/2/23

Ed Czlapinski is a guy I knew in high school. I last heard from him about fifty years ago. A while back, an “Ed Czlapinski” left a comment here on my blog. I thought, “Could that be the same guy?” So I googled his name and discovered there are several guys named Ed Czlapinski out there. I called my old friend Jim Connell and told him about the comment. Connell also knew Ed after me. We both thought it was fantastic that a guy we hadn’t seen in decades could accidentally pop up on my website. I doubt Ed looked me up, there are just too many Jim Harrises in the world. But Ed kept posting comments and it indeed turned out to be the Ed Czlapinski of our memories.

Ed, I hope you are amused that I’m using you for the topic of this essay. It’s really going to be about remembering people from high school and remembering people in general, but then that’s a favorite topic of yours too.

My 50th anniversary of graduating high school was in 2019. In 2018 I started thinking about going to the reunion. Ed Czlapinski was the classmate I hoped to see most. But I didn’t go, and it turns out from his comments Ed didn’t go either. Evidently, we are having our reunion here.

Back in 2018, I thought a great deal about going to the reunion. I joined Classmates.com and studied the 1969 yearbook they had online for Miami Killian High School. It was an intense dive into old memories and it inspired the essay, “How Accurately Can I Remember 50 Years Ago?“

With the return of Ed Czlapinski, I’ve been thinking once again about my high school days. This time I’ve been even harder on myself by digging into my personality. I have found over my lifetime that about half the people I know fondly remember high school and half could only remember hating it. My friend Linda, who also graduated in 1969 did go to her high school reunion and she had the kind of experience I wished I could have had. Not only did she meet with her senior-year classmates, but she had a reunion with her first-grade classmates. I was incredibly envious of her.

I went to three 1st-grade schools, three 7th-grade schools, one school for 6th, 9th, and 12th grades, and two schools for all the other grades. I only attended Miami Killian High School for three months of the 11th grade, and all of the 12th grade. For most of that time, I was working 25-33 hours a week at a grocery store after school. I participated in no after-school activities or attended any school events because as soon as I got off from classes I rushed to Coconut Grove to work at the Kwik Chek.

I realized I didn’t go to my high school reunion back in 2019 because I could only remember the names of four senior classmates: Ed Czlapinski, Steve Miller, James Keith, and Linda Hodges, out of around eight-hundred seniors that graduated that year. I could only remember the name of one teacher, Mrs. Charlotte Travis. I would have gone to the reunion if I had known she would have been there. She was my favorite teacher in my K-12 career.

This past week while contemplating writing this essay I’ve thought deeper and deeper about what I must have been like in high school. My picture wasn’t in the yearbook. I didn’t attend my graduation ceremony. I remember now how I refused to participate in anything school-related activities. I remember walking down the outer hallway and the principal coming up to me and screaming at me, his face inches from mine, and walking away completely indifferent and detached. (He hated my long hair.) I loved my English class with Mrs. Travis, and I loved my Creative writing class, with a teacher I’ve forgotten. Ed Czlapinski was in both of those classes. In my four other classes, I refuse to participate in class, did no homework, and passed them simply because I sat in class and listened to pass the tests.

Why was I like that? I remembered that I also quit my job that year because they demanded I wear a costume the week of Thanksgiving. I was dating a girl who worked at the store, and my quitting ruined that relationship. Why was I such a butthead? My mother was furious with me for quitting my job. My parents grew up in the depression and believed you should never quit a job.

I was very unhappy with the world. I was fighting with my retired Air Force dad over the Vietnam War. My parent’s marriage was going through its worst meltdown (there had been others.) The world just sucked in 1968 and 1969 and being a butthole teen was my way of dealing with it.

Yet, I remember being happy during that year. Isn’t that weird?

My coping method for dealing with alcoholic parents and being moved around the country every year was to become intensely selfish and introverted. I had two friends outside school, Jim Connell and George Kirschner. And I had science fiction and rock music. And I loved the space program. One of the few special things my father ever did for me was to take me, Connell, and George, to see the launch of Apollo 8 around Christmastime 1968.

The reason I don’t remember my classmates at Miami Killian Senior High is because when I was in school I mostly kept to myself and thought about what I’d be doing after school. I would go to class — I didn’t skip them. And I enjoyed listening to the other students talk before the teacher came in, and sometimes I might say something, but I don’t remember saying much.

I remember talking with Ed some, but the main reason I remember Ed is that whenever he walked into a classroom he would go over to the chalkboard, draw a rectangle in the upper-right corner, and print in a quote. Sometimes I’d go to classrooms I didn’t attend with Ed, and one of his quotes would be up on the board. It was Ed’s version of Kilroy Was Here. Ed made himself memorable.

Ed dressed so he looked older like he was in college. He engaged in conversations. He had opinions and often talked about things he had done. He tried to convey he was mature and experienced. However, he always seemed somewhat nervous, so I figured things weren’t what they seemed. Ed, I hope you elaborate on my impression. But Ed made an impression that Connell and I have talked about all these years. I doubt my classmates remember me, but I bet many remember Ed.

This is not the first time that Ed Czlapinski returned to my life. I moved away from Miami in August 1970. I think I might have run into Ed at Miami Date Junior College in our Freshman year (1969/1970), but that memory is vague. I think he told me he was writing for an underground paper. I vaguely remember him saying it was called The Daily Planet. (Now there’s another story for you to tell, Ed.)

Then a few years later, Connell called me and told me he had met Ed again. He had been away to college in Gainesville, and I think Connell told me he came home and Ed living at his mother’s house. That’s another story for you Ed. That was a big surprise. Sometime later, when I was visiting Connell at his mother’s house, Ed showed up with some friends. Ed had left a VW Karmann Ghia in Connell’s backyard. We all went out there to get it started. The car’s tires were all sunk in the sand. I have a memory of all of us guys lifting it out of the sand, but is that even possible? I think that was the last time I saw Ed. I may have talked to him on the phone one time after that.

I know Ed stood out in high school, but why didn’t any of my other classmates? I have a few memories of Bruce Miller and James Keith, but they were from outside of school. I remember Linda Hodges coming to my house once, but she was really my sister’s friend.

Even though I was an introvert I wasn’t shy. I had no trouble talking to people, although I think I mostly listened because quite a few memories I have of high school are of people telling me stuff. I don’t remember their names — but I do remember them telling me personal things.

Now that I’ve spent so many hours thinking about it, I don’t think I allowed myself to get involved with my classmates. I think my lifelong experience of always moving once a year taught me that people came and went. I don’t think I made an effort to make bonds. I regret that.

I’ve always wished and fantasized about having a normal life, or at least what I thought imagined was normal. It would be like Linda’s, where I lived in one house my whole childhood, went to the same schools every year, and had a cohort of friends and acquaintances that developed over the years.

What I wanted was an Our Town childhood. I don’t know why, because that story kills my soul. Just thinking about it waters my eyes and stuffs up my sinuses.

Like the play, I wonder about going back as a ghost to haunt myself in 1968 and 1969 at Miami Killian. Thorton Wilder warns against returning. Thomas Wolfe says we can’t go home again. But I would try.

Looking at the photos in the 1969 yearbook I’m shocked by how young we look. My memory of Ed from 1969 has him looking ten years older than the photo.

When I flip through the yearbook I’m also shocked by all the activities and events that I ignored. One picture showed students with a wall-sized computer. I would give anything now to have worked with computers back then. Of course, I started computer classes at a tech school in 1971, so it would have only been a two-year headstart, but that would have meant a lot. I first learned about computers in 1968 when my dad briefly took a course and he explained about punch cards to me one day.

Ed, do you think about Killian very much?

Do any of the rest of you think about the past like I do?

Now that I’m old and my memory is acting up I find I’m dwelling on what I can remember and what I can’t. I feel like I’m Philip Marlowe on a case looking for clues. I know not to trust memories. I know that I’m revising memories by recalling them. I know I would go back in time even though Thorton Wilder warns against it because wanting to know what really happen is more important than enduring the suffering.

Ed, I hope you don’t mind me using you for this essay. I believe you are also obsessed with memory. And, if memory serves me right, I think you once told me you used me for one of your stories.

I wonder if between the two of us if we could validate any specific memories? Do you know anyone else from that time?

JWH

If You Knew Then What You Know Now

by James Wallace Harris, 6/21/23

How often have you heard an old person say they may look old on the outside but feel like a teenager on the inside? My wife’s uncle once told people on his 89th birthday that he felt 19 inside but something was terribly wrong with his body. And, how often have you wished you could go back to your younger self and give them advice hoping it would change who you were today?

Yesterday on YouTube I watched an excellent TED Talk about how we don’t know what our future self wants, even though we think we do. Journalist Shankar Vendantam gives several examples of people thinking one thing when they are young and something different when they got older. Vendantam makes a case that we’re constantly becoming new people, which is interesting when you think about how we always feel like we’re the same person.

If you could travel back in time to advise your younger self, they would have rejected it. They would have known better. We always think we know better.

I am reading The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner, a novel first published in 1975. It’s not an easy novel to read because Brunner was trying to show what it would be like to live in the early 21st century by extrapolating what he knew from the early 1970s. The novel has been praised for being an early example of fiction about computer hacking and invented the term worm for a computer virus. It’s also about eluding oppressive computer surveillance.

The Shockwave Rider is very hard to read, and I’m having to go back and reread some sections several times. That’s because Brunner was intentionally trying to give his readers future shock. Do y’all remember the 1970 nonfiction book, Future Shock by Alvin Toffler?

And this makes me wonder if we could take back examples of what it’s like to live in 2023 and give them to our younger selves, could they comprehend what their future selves might be like? I think this would be especially dramatic to people who grew up before the internet. I’m not sure people who grew up with the internet could imagine what life was like before it, or understand the concept of future shock.

Let’s imagine taking an iPad full of news videos, documentaries, magazines, and newspapers back to give to our younger self. How would they react? What would they make of 9/11 or January 6th? What would they make of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter? Or watching movies on HBO? How would they feel from watching a week’s worth of the NBC Nightly News? Or a few episodes of PBS Frontline? What would they think of mass shootings and climate change?

I know I would have been horrified. As a teen seeing the real future would be scarier than any horror film.

I’m sure most of us wish we could go back and warn ourselves, hoping we could set our younger selves on a different path so we’d end up living in a better future. Recently, The New York Times ran an opinion piece, “Your Brain Has Tricked You Into Thinking Everything Is Worse.” It’s about the analysis of 235 surveys, covering 574,000 responses that ask people if they think our society is in moral decline. The current political climate suggests that people want to return to an early time when they believe people were nicer. The results of the research show that people always think that, no matter when they are asked, now, or in the past.

My initial reaction was that I agreed that people don’t change, and our perceptions of the past and future remain the same. But I thought the environment and civilization were getting worse, and would get much worse in the future. If you sub to the New York Times, please read the comments to the article linked above. Reactions are all over the place. They are fascinating and revealing, better than the article itself.

Personally, I feel people are more hateful now, but maybe that’s a delusion on my part. I have fond memories of the 1960s, but when I read about that decade in history books, those years were horrible. I think what hasn’t changed is my sense of happiness with life. If I ignore all the turmoil in the world, and just focus on what’s going on in my own life, I was happy then, and happy now.

They say knowledge is power, and that might be true. But a lot of depression, anxiety, and unhappiness come from knowing more about what’s going on around the world. When I first read Stand on Zanzibar in 1969, John Brunner’s 1968 novel about the 2010s, I was scared by the future he imagined. It was full of terrorism and political chaos. But in 1969, America was full of terrorism and political chaos. We forget that there were hundreds of anti-war bombings happening around the country, as well as endless riots and social unrest. And we also forget that statistically, crime was much worse back then.

I find reading The Shockwave Rider fascinating because Brunner invents several futuristic changes on each page that he expected might exist for us in the 21st century. For example, he predicted our lives would be full of gadgets that did all kinds of things for us. And we’ve had zillions of gadgets in our lives. What’s odd, is Brunner mostly predicted different kinds of gadgets that we don’t have. But the idea that lives would be cluttered with gizmos is right on. He also predicted all kinds of sexual and gender changes in society. His examples aren’t exactly the same as what we see today, but again, he was right about our time being more about sex and gender.

I think Brunner was predicting a future we’d want to avoid. That he knew that in the future we’d all wish we could go back and change our younger selves so we’d avoid the future we have. It’s weird to remember reading Brunner in 1969 and thinking about Future Shock in 1970, and then living in 2023 after living with future shock for decades.

Maybe the hate we see today is no more than the hate that existed in the past, but combined with future shock it feels like it’s so much more.

The upshot of all this is we wish things were different, but our minds stay the same. I’m 71 and feel mentally like I did at 17. I do wish my body was 17 again, however, I do feel different philosophically. I feel wiser. I would not exchange that for physical youth.

It’s 2023 but we wish it was the 1950s. But I remember in the 1950s we were so excited about living in the 21st century, and if I think about it, I remember there were a lot of things in the 1950s that were terrible and grotesque too.

Ram Das was right, all we can do is Be Here Now.

JWH

Why Didn’t I Hear The Beatles in 1963?

by James Wallace Harris, 5/25/23

I’ve been playing The Beatles all this week and I noticed something that has me thinking about it a lot. The first two Beatles albums Please Please Me and With the Beatles came out in 1963 in the United Kingdom but I didn’t hear them until after February 9, 1964, when The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Obviously, some Americans heard Fab Four songs before then because there were mobs at the airport and 73 million people watched Ed’s show that night.

When do you remember first hearing the Beatles? I got interested in those dates because I was going to write an essay about what I remembered about The Beatles from 1964, but it bothered me I was recalling my 1964 but the tunes were from 1962 and 1963. America and England were out of sync by over a year.

Why hadn’t I heard the Beatles on the radio in 1963? Starting in 1962, I listened to Top 40 music several hours a day on WQAM and WFUN AM radio stations in Miami, so I should have heard The Beatles’ songs if they were released. I just don’t remember hearing them at all in 1963.

“Love Me Do/P.S. I Love You” was released in England on October 5, 1962, but not until April 24, 1964, in the U.S., when it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Beatlemania could have started in late 1962, or early 1963 — why didn’t it?

“Please Please Me/From Me To You” was the Beatles’ 2nd single in England, released on January 11, 1963. It reached #1 on the New Music Express and Melody Maker charts. “Please Please Me/Ask Me Why” was the first Beatles single released in the United States on February 25, 1963, but failed to chart. Some radio stations around the country played this single but it got no screaming fans and was forgotten. “Please Please Me” reached #35 in Chicago on March 8 on their local charts, and again on March 15, but disappeared after that.

“Please Please Me/From Me To You” was re-released in the U.S. on January 3, 1964, and made it to #3 on Billboard. Again, it was obvious that Americans loved the Beatles, but why did we wait until 1964 to love them? This makes me want to write an alternate history science fiction story about Beatlemania hitting America during Christmas of 1962. And it can’t be all Capitol’s fault.

Three more singles by the Beatles were released in the U.K. in 1963: “From Me To You/Thank You Girl” on 4/11/63, “She Loves You/I’ll Get You” on 8/23/63, and “I Want To Hold Your Hand/This” on 11/29/63. Did Americans visiting England bring back these singles and albums? Weren’t there any word-of-mouth from the jet setters?

According to Wikipedia, 34 songs were recorded by the Beatles in 1962 and 1963. Capitol turned down the opportunity to put them out, and a little label, Vee-Jay snapped up the rights. Vee-Jay planned to release Introducing… The Beatles, a repackaged of the UK album Please Please Me in July of 1963, but Vee-Jay didn’t get it out until January 10, 1964. Then Beatlemania hit and Capitol took back the rights.

Theoretically, I could have heard some of the Beatles songs in 1963 on WQAM or WFUN in Miami, but I don’t think so. What if Beatlemania had arrived a year earlier? Would that have launched The Sixties sooner? The 1960s up until the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, never felt like the legendary times we call The Sixties. 1960 to 1963 felt like the 1950s.

The Sixties, at least to me, began when The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. Seeing them that night felt like Dorothy opening the door in The Wizard of Oz when the film went from black and white to Technicolor. The magic of the Sixties ended for me with Charles Manson and Altamont. In 1970, The Beatles broke up, my father died, and I moved from Miami to Memphis. That’s when I felt The Seventies began.

I was going to write an essay comparing The Beatles’ first two albums against their competition. In America, our first two Beatles albums in 1964 were a mixture of songs from the UK 1963 albums and 1962-1963 singles plus some cuts from the third and fourth British Beatles albums recorded in 1964. It’s all rather confusing if I wanted to understand music as a product of its times.

Here’s an overview of what The Beatles were doing in 1963. As they were writing those songs, or doing covers of American songs, it was 1963. But they made a social and psychological impact on us in 1964. That delay fascinates me.

This week I played all the Beatles albums from Please Please Me (UK 1963) to The Beatles (White Album) (UK/US 1968). I can play all the albums through Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) over and over and did this week. All the songs appeal to me. Each album was a unique masterpiece. Things completely fell apart with The Beatles (White Album). (George Martin and others thought it should have been a single album. I agree completely. The White album feels like a single album with a bunch of outtakes and demos.)

Even though I loved all those Beatles albums through 1967, I’ve only put a few of their songs on my Top 1000 playlist on Spotify. I’ve been wondering why for a long time. I want to compare The Beatles’ songs to the hits that came out at the same time that I love better. But when I saw the dates when the first two albums came out were from 1963, I wondered if should I compare those songs to songs coming out in 1964 when I first heard those Beatles songs, or to songs that were coming out in 1963 when The Beatles recorded their songs?

As I listened to the Beatles’ albums this week it was obvious with each album John, Paul, George, and Ringo progressed in creative sophistication. But then so did pop hits each year. In America, those 1964 Beatles releases stomped the 1964 American releases. But shouldn’t they be compared to 1963 songs?

Finally, could I have heard some Beatles songs in 1963 and they just made no impact on me? Did it take Beatlesmania to get us to love The Beatles? And could the reason I put so few of their songs on my Top 1000 playlist is because Beatlesmania and The Sixties ended in 1969?

JWH

“Why Are All Your Friends Women?”

by James Wallace Harris, 11/17/22

While my sister was visiting last week we socialized with five of my friends. At one point, Becky asked, “Why are all your friends women?” I answered defensively, “I have male friends too,” but actually not that many. Well, two, if you don’t count several guys I interact with on the internet.

I’m writing this essay because this morning I was reading Flipboard and saw another article about how modern men don’t have friends. That made me think about Becky’s question and wondered if I had more female friends than male friends because guys don’t make many friends with other guys. I thought of bull elephants and male orangutans that spend most of their time alone in the jungle. Is it just natural for males to lead lonely lives?

One reason I don’t see more guys I know is that I don’t like leaving home, and neither do my male friends. My longest-running friendship is with a guy named Connell. We met in March of 1967 when we were in the 10th grade at Coral Gables High School in Miami Florida. We struck up a conversation over science fiction and astronomy. I moved away from Miami in 1970 but have remained friends with Connell ever since. But we’ve both stopped traveling and haven’t seen each other in more than twenty years. However, we do talk on the phone a couple times a week.

I met my other close male friend, Mike, in 1980 at work. He lives in Memphis. Susan and I are friends with Mike and his wife Betsy ever since then. We used to socialize more with them, and even travel together, but both Mike and I have become homebodies, especially after Covid, but also because we’re getting old and our health is in decline. Only my wife Susan still likes to go out or travel. I’m quite impressed with her for that.

I had many more male friends, but they have died, moved away, or I just lost contact with them.

Somehow I’ve been lucky to make several female friends which I’ve known for over twenty years. I see and talk to them all fairly regularly. Counting Susan my wife, and Becky my sister, I think the number of my women friends is eleven. Becky got to meet five of them, not counting Susan. I guess that’s why she asked her question.

Several of my women friends I met through Susan. Susan was and is much more social than I am. She has run around with several social groups over the course of our marriage. For a decade Susan took a job out of town and only came home for the weekends, and sometimes not even that. This forced me into socializing again. I started going to the movies with some of her friends or having them over to watch TV, and they became my friends. Two of my women friends were ones I made at work before I retired. And two were ones I made on my own. Our shared friendships were mainly based on movies, TV shows, books, and liberal politics.

If Susan had never worked out of town, I don’t know if I would have made all those women friends. I guess loneliness is the mother of socializing. I do wonder now that I’m in my seventies and want to socialize even less if my women friends will still want to stay friends. When Covid hit we all stopped going to the movies and eating out, and that put a big dent in what socializing I had left in me. By then Susan was back home and we hunkered down keeping each other company for those social distancing years.

If I had never gotten married I would probably be an old guy like those in all the articles. I think some of my women friends were friends with me because they considered me safe because I was married and unthreatening. I think women also like me because I’m willing to listen, and I have a high tolerance for lady chatter. I know that comment will irk some, but I’ve known a lot of guys who told me they broke up with women because they talked too much.

I would like more male friends. Actually, I would like more friends of any kind who share my interests, but that tends to be old guys. Before I retired I thought I had several male friends at work that I would stay in touch with after retiring. But it didn’t work out that way. Some of those guys were just too busy with their families, or they lived too far away in the suburbs. And a couple of them I just stopped seeing when politics got too polarized. Guys love their hobbies, and unless you’re friends share your hobbies, we seldom make the effort to meet up. Many men are just not that social.

When I was young I joined clubs, like the astronomy club, science fiction club, or computer club, and I made casual friends. But I’m just not a hobby club kind of guy and dropped out of all of them. I might have stayed in them if the internet hadn’t happened. The internet is probably the biggest reason why so many guys don’t have friends today.

And when men are social, the driving force behind it is to get laid. Once I got married I began losing interest in going out, especially to parties. And I have to admit that I made friends with so many women because I was also attracted to them. Nothing happened in that regard, but I believe I enjoy the company of women because I’m programmed to chase after women and to consider them pleasant company. I’ve wondered if I would keep up female friendships if that programming had been turned off.

Unless we have a shared interest I’m not sure guys have a reason to get together. I’m not sure we crave each other’s company. We like to compete with each other, and we like to work together on a project, build something, be on a team, work towards a goal, or fix something together. Women seem to have the ability to just be friends without a purpose. To just hang out. All those lonely guys in the articles seem to be both unlucky in love and without a purpose.

I do have shared interests with all my female friends, but it’s at a smaller percentage than I have with Mike and Connell. Actually, many of my interests and all my hobbies bore my women friends. I wish my female friends had more male-like qualities. Probably all of them would call me sexist if I said why. But then I’m often called sexist by my women friends because I like to make generalizations about males and females.

I do wonder about all the men in these articles who can’t make any friends. Maybe they never leave their apartment. You have to leave the house to make friends. That’s probably why I haven’t made any new friends in the last decade. And I have to wonder why men don’t make more female friends. Guys who are married probably are like me and gave up socializing after getting married. But unmarried guys should be out there socializing – especially if they are under fifty and still want to find a wife. However, I’ve known a lot of guys who told me they don’t like being friends with women, and once they gave up on getting married or getting laid, just gave up on women.

The internet has allowed me to make a lot of online male friends. But that’s because I get to meet people who are interested in my exact interests without leaving home. For example, I like science fiction magazines that were published from 1939-1975. I and two online friends, one from Great Britain and the other from South Africa, created a Facebook group devoted to science fiction short stories and it now has 642 members. Many of them love the same old science fiction magazines that I do. I used to have two friends that loved those magazines that lived in town. One died, and the other moved away. Sometimes it’s hard to find friends with the same exact interest.

JWH