Am I a bad friend?
I only ask this because recent events have come to light that have called this into question. Well, not so much events as the reaction of others to my reaction to situations involving friends in distress.
Confused? Allow me to explain.
Just incase you complain, Brough, there are so many worse pictures I could’ve chosen
This is Michael Brough. He is a good guy. Scratch that – great guy. He recently went to South Korea to teach English for a year (when I say recently I mean it’s been less than a week as I write this) and is experiencing his first real living abroad scenario and I couldn’t be happier for him. He’s going to have a great time.
He has sent me messages over the last few days updating his status and it sounds like he’s adjusting pretty well to being a stranger in a strange land. For anyone who is what would be considered a westerner, living in the ‘far east’ (hooray for political correctness!) is a pretty startling culture shock. But you meet a few people, see a few sites and before long you’re owning that place… and that’s just what happened. He met a fellow traveller on the street and despite warnings from his mother about following strange men into bars, he’s rockin it.
Then I get this text from him, which I will share with you through the magic of iMessage:
I’m willing to bet this wasn’t the kind of adventure he was looking to have…
Wow. Could I have been a little more sensitive to his plight? Probably. I was raised better than that. But even right now as I write this, I can’t stop laughing. There’s just something about imagining him curled up under a bridge that I think is hilarious. When I lived in Tokyo, I can say I never missed my last train/bus home but I knew many people who did – some of which found pieces of cardboard and slept in fields or on sidewalks until dawn. You see, some places the public transit only runs until a certain time then starts back up for the morning commute, making anyone, like poor Brough, screwed if they miss it.
After I made a few tasteless suggestions for his conundrum, such as he should stash an emergency pillow and blanket under the bridge for next time (to which, shockingly, he wasn’t amused by), I tried to calm him by getting him to look on the bright side:
The sad thing is… he told me there was a typhoon going on earlier in the conversation and I, uh, forgot…
All a part of the adventure, right? Which brings me back to my original question…
Am I a bad friend? Of course not… a friends’ suffering is funny!
Poor Brough…