The scenario. You, your wife and your dog have planned a round Oz driving trip. Your wife's best friend, her husband and their dog will be in their bus. You'll travel together.
Early on in the trip they forge ahead, on each leg they go out of sight and you wonder if you break down that you won't have the help you could have had if he'd kept an eye on you and kept close by.
You drive along an outback highway and it happens, engine oil seal gives way. A tow job. No phone range. Your friends don't know, they were 5 kms ahead. You hitch a lift 60kms to the last town and organise the tow truck. You wait at the van park until its fixed.
Your friends text you when they are finally in phone range about 300km away. You reply that you are OK, the car needed towing and "this is why one should keep watch on the other party"
You also tell them to continue with their holiday but you are fuming inside.
There are many questions but these are the ones I need answering
- it it unreasonable to expect your friends to automatically realise for safety reasons to stay together?
- if you think so and they don't share that view, would that difference mean you could not ever be close mates?
- is there a bare basics level of mateship that you expect from friends.
As we are in our van waiting for our car repairs my dear wife wants me to remain friendly towards our "friends" which I would now find difficult. But I'll try. Well meet about 5 days from now.
Here's the thing. Had the tables been reversed when I found out my mate was stranded or even settled back at the caravan park, I would have driven back there to support them. In fact on two occasions that happened on our trip.
Is it unreasonable to base your friendship with someone upon your own values?
How can you calculate acquaintance will make a committed "mate" in the long term? So you can save time and not waste effort on someone that would leave you for dead on an outback highway?
Are we unfair having expectations?
Two mates head off riding their trail bikes. One gets a flat tyre. The other says "too bad, its not my bike that has a flat tyre" and rides off. It would be a given that they'd help each other in such circumstances.
But my sister hit the nail on the head. "Our father always went over and beyond the call of duty and always got hurt".
Im tired of people hurting me. It has to stop. The walls are going up!
I just have to find a way of doing that and putting on a smiling face at the same time
Tony WK
