So I’ve been thinking about my tribes.
It’s taken me a while– when I was in school, I was one of the few students who was married and working full time. Mate and I were our own tribe, and, very honestly, including the kids, we’ve maintained our tiny tribalism, and that has been my touchstone.
Beyond that, when I was teaching, every time I thought I’d found my tribe, they’d either move or have somehow had a life-changing experience that made us drift apart.
Sometimes, me and my tribe just experienced philosophical differences. I favored paganism, and they were more inclined towards misogynistic douchefuckery.
And sometimes, in spite of being related by blood, vocation, or time, I was simply the odd man out of the tribe. The yarn, the movies, the stories, the approach to life– it all sort of rendered me the laughing stock of the tribe. The fuckup, and the member most likely to crack the wrong joke at the wrong time, or to have to explain where the humor came from, which then merely rendered it lame.
So today, a friend of mine was watching Teen Wolf, and it was the episode. You guys know. The One With the Pool.
My friend liked this episode, for obvious hottie reasons. She was going to watch it again.
“For strategic sheep purposes?” I asked, and she laughed.
And then I tried to remember where I’d actually heard that line before.
And it occurred to me. It didn’t matter where I’d heard that line before. It didn’t matter where she’d heard that line before.
She could have been thinking about any number of things–fiber, knitting, comedy. She could have thought it was a dirty joke and laughed. She crochets–she could have been planning her next project. She could have been laughing about the origin of the term “dyed in the wool”. The point is, it didn’t matter. The point is that she got it, and for any of the reasons I thought it was funny, she thought it was funny.
It may take completely different things to piss us off, but humor? That is a thing we share.
And that right there is maybe the hallmark of the found tribe.
I thank Geoff, god of biscuits, whenever one of you out there laughs with me, and I know I’ve found mine 🙂
(Oh yes– don’t forget to check out my new Amy’s Lane article on going to conventions and conferences. Bibles full of truth my brethren, bibles full of truth!)
