Day 29 of The Single Woman Blog Challenge: Who is your closest or most special friend that you’ve never met and what do they mean to you?

Yeah, unless you’re 12, this topic is silly so I’m not gonna write about it. Because really, I have awesome friends and I’m never out here looking to add to my collection; I meet people and some of them I moderately tolerate and so we talk, text, or hang out again. That’s just how it happens for me. I don’t really like people because they’re fickle so I don’t have a whole bunch of friends, but the people who are in my circle are important to me so I will tell you a little about them.

My old travel partner: She’s the person with whom I was held at gunpoint in Honduras and almost thrown from the train in Austria. We’ve been to something like 7 countries together in the last 13 years. It’s hard to find someone you can travel with and not kill each other but she is that for me. On our trips, we each have our distinct roles, we take them very seriously, and fun is had by all.

My new travel partner: We’ve been hated on and harshly judged in New York City AND Paris and we’re planning more shenanigans in London in March. We both loathe our respective cities and she may be the only person I know who flies more than I do. She is also queen of the Groupons which leads us into some interesting places no matter where we are.

The college bestie: You know, this was the person you ROLLED WITH; from frat parties to bowl games, to boyfriend surveillance exercises. You kinda have to stay friends with this person because of the collective secrets you hold about the crazy goings on that were your late teens and early twenties. The best part of this friendship is looking back and asking our older, more mature and in her case, parental selves, “were we really that crazy?” The answer is a resounding, “YES. Yes, we were.”

The friend you can only take in small doses: I have a few of them and God bless them all. These are the people that you track down if you want to get turnt up but you know you can’t go hard like that EVERY weekend so you hang on a quarterly basis. Yeah, you know the ones.

The person no one would ever guess that you were cool with: We’re friends because of some uncanny mutual acquaintances and have gotten into some of the weirdest situations ever like the time he made me laugh so hard, beer came out my nose. That hurt. But we’re still cool, for some odd reason because we also have a public mutual disdain for one another.

The homie who holds you down when you’re in their city: If you’ve read any of my posts, you know I get around so it’s always good to have a homie in every city so you always know what’s poppin and if you ever need a place to lay your head, they got you. I have them in different area AND country codes. It’s a good look.

My old work crew from the D: This was the craziest and smartest collection of people I ever worked with. For two years, we worked, drank, karaoke, watched Dave Chappelle and did all manner of foolishness together. About a third of us live on the west coast now and still keep in touch and we’re all still connected in one way or another. Never have I felt at home with my geeky and nerdiness as I did when I worked with them and although we’re not together in that form anymore, we will always rep “the Z” and throw it up when we see each other.

The homies: So a lot of my friends are men. No, seriously. I have platonic relationships with these men and some I would consider brothers, even though I already have 3 of my own. These are the guys who respectfully remind you that you are “bad” and “fine” and will let you know when you’re about to fall for the okie doke (but without blocking) and who you can go have a drank with at the bar and they have your back in a knife fight. I’m so glad to have my boys.

My DJ buddies: This is the crew I first started spinning with, aka “Groovehouse” and the DJs I’ve met along the way from Ann Arbor, to the Dominican Republic, to Amsterdam and Atlanta. We’re always talking music and trading rare releases and import mixes and back in the day, we used to go to the record store together. We talk gear and gigs, venues and road cases. It’s a sacred club and I love being a part of it.

The contingent of people who still call me “JuJu”: This is a group of people from my hometown who have literally known me since birth since that’s when I was given that nickname. My godbrother couldn’t pronounce “Julia” so I became “JuJu” and it stuck. Hard. People still call me that. And I still immediately turn around when I hear it. It’s amazing how long some habits persist but it feels good knowing there are people in your life who have cared about you from the beginning.

Welp, that’s not everyone but it gives you a good idea of the kind of people I kick it with. Like I said, I’m not out shopping for new friends because I feel like something is missing, as the title of the post suggests but when I run across cool people, I try to make connections because that is what life is about. Social media has helped us loosely quantify those connections and I must say that were it not for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, some of these relationships might not be possible. So here’s to champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends. Bottoms up and pinkies out.