The Medium of Friendship

When you are a sixteen year old in Aiken, South Carolina, you find yourself heartily outnumbered by horses & retired people. That is how it feels to be a sixteen year old in Aiken. My closest friends managed to consistently claim a table at the only place open past 8 P.M. That's right. Our hangout was Dunkin' Donuts on Whiskey Road. The horses & old people were already in bed by the time we met up. However, every once in a while, an older woman would chastise Will for smoking pot outside Dunkin'. He rolled his own cigarettes. To the untrained Aiken eye, I suppose it was difficult to spot the difference between a joint & a rolled cigarette. Every Monday, rain or shine, hot or 'cold' (Aiken never really got properly cold), my Monday coffee friends met at Dunkin' Donuts on Whiskey Road.

The table outside was pink. Should I have the necessary training to properly identify nuanced colors, I still would call the table pink. It's my standard of 'pinkness'. If Plato was right, then the table outside Dunkin' was pretty much the Form of Pink. Sorry for bringing Plato into this. But after three years of Monday coffee, I became oddly attuned to our surroundings. Our conversations varied. Imagine the lamest kids you know discussing how terribly our Christian school formed our view of God & the Church. Now imagine those same kids tracing the subtleties of Mad Men character development. Now imagine budgeting $1.89 of the $20 I made a week for the worst cup of coffee. I loved our pink table at Dunkin'. But the coffee truly was atrocious. (There's a point to the rambling, I promise.)

When I went off to college, I found myself in a coffee-infused culture. If someone did an anthropological observation of our dorm, they would note that we esteemed those who drank black coffee. The more intricate the coffee method, the higher social status. Flavored coffee drinkers were stoned. Sorry, I should clarify. I went to a Bible college. Flavored coffee drinkers were killed by stoning. By the end of my tenure, I claimed perfection to the French Press and rising proficiency on a Hario V60 pour over. (Light roast only.)

The pink table at Dunkin' and my French Press facilitated an important lesson for me: proper friendship is best accomplished through a medium. I still call my best friends from high school my 'Monday Coffee' friends. My friend Scott is a leather artisan and cigar lover. He started a little collective at his home on Thursday nights. His title for our group message is simply 'Cigars'. That's what we do. We come together and smoke cigars. Every friend group I have finds a medium. Maybe the medium is coffee. Maybe the medium is cigars. Maybe the medium is volleyball. Maybe it's a pink table on Whiskey Road. Food is always a good option.

C.S. Lewis once said, "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one" (The Four Loves). Nothing brings people together like a mutual love. I suppose I do not have anything particularly profound to conclude with. Find a medium. Find someone to share it with. I hope in the process you make that magical shift from the love of the medium to the love of your friend. Then, should the medium change, the appreciation of your friend will remain.

-HGM