Comic for Monday 11/22 (Early High Res)
There was a time when our kids played with the friends we gave them. The children of friends of ours, other family, whoever we decided their playdate was with. The kids are old enough now that they're out in the world making friends on their own, which is great, but it also means I'm being roped into awkward blind dates with other parents in order to facilitate their increased social presence.
Just about all of them are perfectly lovely people, but most often there's very little common ground with any of them beyond the surface-level stuff. In fact, the more of these fellow adults I meet, the less like an adult I feel myself. Oh, you commute to work wearing a tie and want to casually chat about dividends and weekend fishing trips? Excuse me, I'll be over here being the guy who sometimes works in his pajamas, drawing silly pictures on the internet. My plans for the evening are either hunting monsters in a late 1800's bayou, or digital version of a massive fantasy board game I also own a copy of.
It reminds me a little of high school, where sometimes you had to be able to sort of exist in social situations even if you didn't necessarily feel like you belonged.
Comments (10)
I don’t play video games much, but all my coworkers and I WFH. We have frequent video calls so I have to wear *something* but there isn’t a dress code (other than ‘wear clothes that aren’t excessively revealing’).
Yeah it’s hard to find parents of kids with similar interests. Making adult friends isn’t as easy as one would imagine.
So true! Still waiting to find another dad nerd in RL.
I feel this so hard as I sit here playing video games on a Monday morning
As someone who loves Sports, works in finance and plays video games in his spare time.. I'm pretty sure I've never been in this situation 🤣 Can usually lug into any conversation without that social awkwardness. That said, if the mums at the school start talking about reality TV... Yeaaaah no.
Tim...dude...as a severe introvert dad of 2 with a raging extrovert wife I feel this SO hard man
Good to know that there are others out there with the same issues!
To paraphrase Sartre, “Hell is other parents”.
Very accurate. Luckily, we don't have to rely on those "friends" alone, there are so many wonderful, interesting people in the world :)
I get that - my close friend group.. none of them are gamers. They are into all the things I am; and they can appreciate the games I play but it just isn't their bucket list - they'd rather be doing electronics and robotics which is great. Now there is one exception to that - they do tend to love retro games so we still bust out a SNES every now and then which is great but.. I kinda wish I could share all the creations I've done in games with them but they just don't get it.