bus rides

I was drifting off, but he nonchalantly disregarded my tendency to sleep on any and every moving vehicle and instead commented on the traffic jam we were facing while leaving Manhattan.

I figured it wouldn't hurt to reply and then surreptitiously slide back to a comfortable silence and fall back asleep, so I agreed and noted the odd influx of commuter buses traveling into New York City when the rest of the world seemed to be leaving it.

And then the topic slowly morphed from the sheer number of commuters to police cars and what a hassle pulling over bad drivers would be in the city...and from there it on took off into an amalgamation of college acceptance talk, comments of how fast grade school had passed and how much faster the next few years would go, including a nostalgic twinge of whether our string of mutual friends would still be as close and amiable as we are to each other right now.

Some advice found its way into the conversation, along with encouragements on future endeavors and realizations of what this school has done to both of us, in terms of self-motivation.

After that, thankfulness of how privileged we both are to have loving parents who can barely be shoved into the mold "Asian Parents" have been pushed into by their loving first-generation American children.

It is the strangest thing, the concept of friendship. It emerges from the most unlikely and likely circumstances: sometimes you spot a person and instantly know that the two of you will become good friends. Sometimes the friendship is reluctant, a result of coercion--but a good result. And sometimes friendship manages to find its way through a mess of bitter emotions and bad first impressions...and turn into something really cool, for a lack of better words.

Am I lucky enough to experience all three?
Yes.

Will I ever cease to be amazed at how people can talk for hours on end without hesitation or a lack of topics, even if such a conversation has never existed between the two?
No.