Proximity and Necessity Form Friendships

I finished reading Chapter Two on Groups, in our text “Living Folklore”. I can link several ideas from the chapter that helped me to understand the group with which I most feel affiliated with. I will specifically focus on how and why our group formed.

I have two really close girlfriends. Our friendship was essentially formed as a direct result of our husbands’ occupational group. My girlfriends and I are so different from one another. Everything from our house cleaning routines, our decorating tastes, to our parenting philosophies. We often laugh about how we can be such great friends when we are so different. But the one thing that links the three of us together is our husbands’ occupational group The Indiana State Police.

Our group first began forming as a result of proximity. All of our husbands work out of the Bloomington State Police Post. Our friendship first formed out of necessity, because we all three volunteered to plan The State Police Post holiday party and over the years, we would organize the yearly State Police Post Picnic or the occasional Parents Night Out, as our regular interaction with in our group. Of course all of these events that we organized included all of the husbands and wives from the Bloomington Post. Over the years the Parents Night Out was too difficult to plan a specific night that would accommodate everyone’s schedule. So we kind of scrapped the Parents Night Out and the three of us took it upon ourselves to have regular interaction not only with each other; but also would include our husbands. Some of our regular interactions would included dinner out, movies, pitch in dinners, watching the Colts or UFC boxing.

One of the aspects of Chapter Two that reflects how our friendship formed and how our friendship has evolved is our shared interest of our husbands State Police Occupational Group. “Sometimes, individuals may come together seeking others with common skills and /or interests and form a group based on those commonalities.”(Sims and Stephans, 40). We came together with a shared interest of the Bloomington State Police Post. From that shared interest, a subgroup of our husbands’ occupational group called “friendship” was formed. This friendship is not only shared between the wives but also between the husbands.

This Post is in response to Chapter 2 Reflection Question .



Works Cited

Sims, Martha and Martine Stephens. Living Folklore An Introduction to the Study of People and Their Traditions. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2005.