With a "Y" the Stages of Friendship.

The Introduction.

“Y” is one of my oldest friends; I met him shortly after my first remembered city to city move. It was the first day of the 6^th grade, and for me it was a new town, and new school. Till then school had not been overly pleasant for me, I was bullied at both of my previous schools, didn't really fit in and at that point I was thinking “at least I knew people at my old school, and here I don’t know anyone.” But it being elementary school in a small town, and me being in french immersion it didn’t take long for “Y” to come over and ask me first if I was “Brooke” as what I thought was a joke to which I only responded with a shake of my head in the negative. Then he asked if I was “Tommy”, and once again I shook my head except this time in the affirmative. And from there he told me to come and wait with him because we were in the same class. It was a grade 6/7 split, which I don’t think is actually all that uncommon for French immersion classes, he was grade 7, and as mentioned above I was in 6^th.

The beginning.

Now the friendship between me and Y didn’t grow out of geography, where we went to summer camp (because we went to two separate summer camps), it didn’t grown out of me thinking of him being an older or younger brother type thing, it wasn’t a matter of me being inspired by him or aspired to be him, or for any of man other reasons. But our friendship had sprung from something much simpler. Our friendship came from having similar interests, things like Lego, Legend of Zelda, collecting things, the first Matrix movie, as well any number of other RPG video games. And we complimented each other quite well.

But then I moved. And I had thought that was it. It was another friendship that had ended because I had moved again. It wasn’t nice, it was by no means good in my eyes, but at that time I had accepted it.

The Return.

Then an opportunity for me to return to the town I thought I’d said goodbye to. And so I jumped at it, not because I expected to see the people I knew but because I enjoyed the town itself. (Also not just because visiting also happened to mean that I would be missing school.) Then by pure coincidence during some of the, well I guess you could call it, free time, I went out with a couple other people for what was supposed to be a brisk walk. But who should I come across, but Y himself and his at then girlfriend. And we got talking, only for a short while because we were both busy for the rest of that day. But before I left, we proceeded to meet up again several times that weekend. Before the weekend was over we had agreed to keep in touch and so we did, electronically of course, at that time meant through MSN messenger and myspace. This time when we parted I had no doubt we would see each other again.

And we have seen each other since, several times in fact. And on more than one of these such occasions happened to be instances where we stayed at each other’s houses for days at a time.

Post script: He had this nickname in a somewhat self-imposed manner. Because though he had a somewhat common name, rather than it being spelled normally it unconventionally had a “Y” where commonly there is an “I”.

Rules (number one): The online to offline transition.

I find it a little odd even if it's about myself, but I like rules... most of the time. But the problem with rules is that there aren't clear rules about everything in life, so I've decided to write some of my own. I'm gonna start with something I know a little about. So these are the rules about making the transition from knowing someone online to knowing them offline as well.

Rule #1: Be close. If you want to transition to an offline relationship of any type whether it be friendship or romantic the first thing you need is to be in relatively close proximity to the person. Now what is relatively close is a matter of personal preference, but you can't be considered in an offline relationship if you only meet once and that's it. But I'm not saying that meeting someone offline for the purpose of meeting them is bad because it isn't it could lead to a stronger online relationship or even it could lead to the desire to make the transition to offline.

Rule #2: Prepare for disappointment. When meeting someone offline prepare yourself for the possibility of being disappointed (or just surprised). Now I will split this into two parts. First visually, second personality.
Visual: I think this is obvious but people are not their profile pictures. One thing I've noticed is that very often profile pictures are people at their best, as well a photo also does not always show the entirety of a person. So when you meet the person they could be having a bad hair day, bad breakout day, or something else that has them not looking their best. You also have to take into account that not all profile pictures are always recent. They could be using their favourite photo of themselves from high school, university or something of that sort and you have to  ask yourself how long ago was that photo taken. Also profile pictures don't give you whole view, they aren't in 3D and sometimes they are just parts of their body or face leaving parts out. Not to mention the possibility of photoshop. In this way you can never judge a person by their profile picture.
Personality: People are not always the same offline as they are online. Just think about it, we are internet people where the tiniest voice can be perceived as being gigantic, where someone shy offline can be a social butterfly online. There are also those people who are just more comfortable with communicating textually over communicating vocally. And then there's the nerves, oh the nerves. I'm not sure about you but personally I get nervous quite easily, and that can affect everything. But what I find that might be useful for those awkward first encounters offline, just go back to elementary/primary school and pass notes. It could also cause laughing fits which is a great ice breaker.

Rule 3: The most important rule. Now I consider this to be the most important rule because it applies not only to the transitions of relationships but to every aspect of life. Well maybe not everyone. But it applies to a reasonable amount of situations. This rule is as follows "Be nice, and don't he an ass". (This is actually a variation of Wheaton's Law, which is "Don't he a dick".) I know this might seem like common sense but it can be the earliest rule to break and forget. But it's simple schoolyard logic if you're not nice people don't like you. And easily enough if you're an ass, then you suck.

Post Script: I'm not sure if I will end up writing a series on rules that I think up about life and stuff but I do like the idea of doing it.