Walking a fine line

Specialization is interesting, be it in creatures or creations. For instance, think of what cars started as: little more than a carriage with a motor replacing the horses. Now look around you: sport cars, SUVs, semis, micromobiles. More and more you see the crossover vehicles. Whether it's a super engined station wagon, a mini-SUV, or a midget car with 4 wheel drive, these are vehicles created to try to appease multiple cravings in the human consumer. Want massive size and yet not eat through a gallon of gas backing out of the driveway? There are hybrid SUVs out there to help you. Want a people mover that revs like a ferrari? They exist. The problem is, these mixtures never fully excel in all the roles they are asked to fill. But damn if they don't try, and some do a pretty good job.

I feel like a crossover car. An MFP (multi-faceted person), if you will.

I have, for example, the adult. The part of me that pays her bills on time, makes sure there's money in the bank, that tries to remember important dates, and knows how to drive like a rational person, among other things.

Then there's the kid. Obsess over games much? Yes. Cartoons? Yes. Highly distractable? Yes. It's the part of me that tends to have a blatant disregard for what other people might be thinking when they see me chasing a grasshopper across a parking lot.

Both roles are crucial in the course of my days. I have friends of all ages, and while a night of a good dinner, conversation, cocktails, and laughing is a blast, so is a day at the computer talking to my guild mates organizing a raid or playing badminton in the pool with highly mutable rules.

Of course, like the multi-use cars, sometimes you don't fit the individual roles as well as you'd like. There's the tendency to forget my audience, and occasionally I'll find myself trying really hard to get someone excited about the last Pixar movie when all they want to do is get their work done. Or the occasional slip with my younger friends when they ask me about my day and I tell them about a really interesting thing that happened at work and realize as soon as the story commences that I can't really finish that particular story. Or finding out that playing on the playground equipment hurts your knees really badly. Or struggling to be a good shopping buddy, and failing secondary to poor taste and being distracted by something cool over in Brookstone.

I screw up a lot.

That being said, I am mystifed as well as grateful that I have the friends that I do. All of them. I don't know how else to be, and that seems to be okay.