One thing I remember about childhood is how easy it was to make friends. “Do you want to play with me?” you’d ask another child in a deadpan tone, and they’d reply with either yes or no. (If I said that to someone today, they’d likely call the police.
) Making friends as a teenager wasn’t too difficult either. I remember sitting next to people in class, and the next thing I knew I was sharing roll-ups with them at lunchtime, or passing scrunched up notes about who in our year we found fit. In fact, as a young person, I always had at least one best mate, if not a whole group of them.
Maybe it would’ve been more on brand for me to have been a social outcast, but I can’t claim that was ever the case. When I look around me now, though, I have very few close friends that remember me from before my frontal lobe had fully developed. There are a few, yes – a much beloved friend from primary school, a few mates from my teen job (working at a vintage shop in Shoreditch that still haunts my nightmares to this day) – but other than that, it’s as though those earlier friend-making years were wiped clean from my personal history.
I’m surprised my partner doesn’t suspect that I committed some grisly crime in my youth and had to take on a new identity. It’s a commonly held belief that, if a person has no childhood friends , they’re probably not to be trusted. There must be a reason , people claim.
They’ve probably done some deranged thing. They’re probably, l.