The J. Klassen Method on Making and Losing Friends

When we decided to have a kid, one big concern was that we were going to lose friends. Or at least not see them as much.

Friends are pretty important to me, but since my early twenties there has been a pretty steep decline in the number of friends I have had. The chart below will illustrate:

Of course, I wanted a kid, but I didn't want to have even fewer friends than we already had.

Well...it's been pretty interesting so far.

When we got a dog, I could sense half our friends rolling their eyes. I didn't blame them, I used to be the same way. When my brother and sister-in-law first got their pomeranian in the back of my mind I thought, "Why on earth would you get a dog? And why would you get a dog that looks like a cat?"

To me, it meant they could never travel and their house would always be a mess and they wouldn't sleep at night because of yapping...etc.

When they left for Kazakhstan to adopt their son, Cooper (who is awesome), somehow we ended up agreeing to look after this dust-bunny sized dog. We were looking down the barrel of two to three months with a yappy little mutt that could easily get lost in the laundry. I remember early on, I'd try to take a step towards this pup (named Scully, after X-Files) to pet her and she would run the other way and hide behind furniture. And then I couldn't find her and I'd panic. Honestly, she is so small, she could easily disappear into the air ducts. This was going to be a blast.

The next couple of days are a little bit hard to remember. I remember one day, Trisha had Scully somewhere, maybe at the family cabin, and I came home from work and there were no mouse sized paws scampering somewhere just out of sight. I continued to cautiously walk around the house as I had come accustomed to, making sure not to step on this nano dog until I convinced myself she wasn't around. And in astonishment, I had to admit to myself, I missed her.

For nearly three months, I loved that dog, and I still do. As soon as scully went back home, we started talking about getting our own.

But having a dog does polarize your friends a little. Some people stop coming over, understandably because of allergies or whatever. Other friends start coming over for the first time. We had friends that lived two streets over from us that we knew, and we liked, but for some reason we never got together. Then, suddenly they were over all the time. In fact, they would come over to check up on Ralph for us when we weren't home. So were we riding the coattails of our dog's popularity? Maybe.

It's no secret that once you have a dog on a leash you meet all sorts of people walking down the street. I have found, though, that a lot of the people you meet in that scenario are just a little off. There is one very pleasant lady in our neighbourhood that would never pass up a chance to meet a dog. I like her, and she's very nice...but she's nuts. She drives a bike with a stuffed dog in the front basket. She wears a helmet covered in stickers of dogs. Did I mention she's about 50 years old?

The first time we met her, she nearly bailed off her bike to get to Ralph as fast as she could. In her thick, french-canadian accent she says, " 'Allo, Ralph. You want to zay 'allo, Ralph? 'E's just trying to zay, 'allo."

She continued to speak to Ralph for about 3 minutes. She would say bizarre things, like, "'Dis is da precious pineapple!" It got to the point that even Ralph was tilting his head to the side as if to say, "What's your deal, lady?"

Eventually she turned to me and instructed me that, "It iz very good dat you 'ave ah 'arness. Dis type ov dog cannot wear ah collar because if zay choke to 'ard, eh, dare eyez, day can POP out ov dare 'ead."

I started to laugh and then realized she was serious.

Babies have the same affect on neighbours. Our old walks that used to take about 20 minutes now take well over an hour because everyone wants to see Otto (he's that good looking). We've met a dozen people that live on our street that we had never met before. Two sets of neighbours who have never been inside our house have made us meals. It's been pretty nice, if not a little bit revealing as to how we segregated ourselves when we were D.I.N.Ks. (Dual Income No Kids).

And as for the friends we already had, it's been pretty amazing as well. One set of friends transplanted all of their 18 month old's infant-care items into our house, easily saving us $1500 (strollers, carriers, etc). They made us meals and bring us coffee. Another set of friends have had us over to eat twice, brought food to our house once and once showed up with cookies just because. They call all the time just to see how we're doing and send Trisha supportive texts on a regular basis. We really love those friends.

And then there's Facebook, and now this blog, that has allowed me to connect with all sorts of people. There are people reading this blog that I never expected to care, and that's been really, really appreciated.

That all being said, this makes for 6 posts in about a week. It's been fun posting like this, but I've discovered it takes a lot of time. Therefore, I'm going to cut back. I've been so happy with how many people have been reading this thing. (Almost 500 views this week!) I really hope you'll continue to check back every now and then, and even tell other people if you think they would be interested. However, I think I'm going to cut the posts down to somewhere around twice a week.

Finally, I wanted to say one more thing. My wife has been a real super star over the last two and a half weeks. I watched her turn into a great mom so quickly and so naturally. Trisha has always been talented and caring and beautiful and organized, and motherhood has only accentuated each of her remarkable traits. I love you, Trisha. I love you, family.