Friendship Trumping Politics

WE MIGHT ALL be able to agree on this; that friendship is more important than politics. Or maybe the most ardent political animals would disagree, poor tragic souls, addicted to political conflict and adrenaline. We have more friends in high school than at any other time in our lives. Hallways teeming with empathetic teenagers, cloistered together in a petri dish in which connections flourish like bacteria on rotting meat..After high school, we scatter like disturbed minnows. College,the military, work, marriage and kids. We cherish of options and opportunties, and exploit them. We make friends as we age, but we lose others, with most of us moving from place to place,job to job, in a semmi-nomadic society. The average American, according to Robert Putnm in his seminal monograph "Bowling Alone", has one good friend. That's a statistical average; many people have many friends, some, perhaps most Americans have a small inner circle of buds, sisses, and bro's, many people have none. You hear them talking about in on Facebook, and who would lie on Facebook? Then too, we change friends as our personalities subtly change. Americans are not knwon to be tolerant of those who are unlike themselves. All these assertions,or course, are generalities. I once read that no matter you are located on land, you are within ten feet of a rat. Just as I was starting to frreak out and run to the hardware store to stock up on rat traps,(I have never even seen a rat trap, they must be huge), a friend of mine quietened me be assuring me that this, too, was undoubtedly a statistical average. I have noticed that many of us in freedom's land are mch closer to our friends than to our siblings. We all know how that goes. We grow up in the same house with other kids competing for the attention of the parents,the dynamics depending on the number of kids, their age differences, genders, traditional two parent family,single mom,single dad. and on and on. Since grandparesnt and grand children tend to form especially tight bonds,being seperated by a generation, one might speculate than people who were raised by their grand parents have a special treat,inundation of love, scarcity of strict discipline. Whatever the the price and benefits of that may be,they manifest later, and forever. I was an am the second oldest of two children, with a sister nearly three years older than I. We were raised by a single mom. Father was nearby, in the same twon,and was very close to both of us. I have no complaints. When my sister and I were pre teens, we played together happily, although she dominated and bullied me generally. An aunt warned her that I would soon outgrow her, and exact revenge. I outgrew her, but never exacted the revenge I more than deserved. We were estranged through our teen years. Three grades apart, in the same high school building. Yikes. I couldn't wait for her to get out of the house, which she did at twenty two, by joining the military and getting married after graduating from college while living at home. Hell, I lived at home with mom until I was twenty seven,because we got along,it didn't hurt mom to have a "man" around the house, and I had nothing to do except to work on a masters degree, and then a doctorate. What it all comes down to, maybe, is, "whatever works". We humans adjust well,if reluctantly,to change. We thrive in diverse environments. We have no choice, because change is nature. Now, old, I am among the fortunate few in poessession of a sister I adore and get along great with, and a few good friends. To hell with politics. I vote, and that's enough.