A Friend Indeed

I was listening to the Tony Kornheiser show this morning, as I do most mornings heading into work. Mr. Tony has been on vacation the last two weeks, and just returned this week. Apparently, that wasn't enough, since he took off Friday as well! So, Andy Pollin was filling in.

When he fills in, it's basically him and Stern. Stern's the British guy who plays tunes that Tony must guess, often related to some story of the day. Tony, who knows a lot of music, is great at this, and rarely misses. Andy, who's musically challenged, misses nearly every one.

In effect, Andy runs a one man show, and I must say it doesn't work nearly as well as the cacophony of voices when Andy, Tony, Gary, and Stern are on.

However, Andy had an interesting, non-sports related anecdote, and he was going to spin it for half an hour. In particular, he tells of how he ran into a fellow radio commentator whom he hadn't seen in a few years. His friend greets him by name, and they talk for about 5 minutes or so.

In the meanwhile, his friend is not alone. He had just completed lunch with a friend of his, and it looked like they were heading back to the office. During this entire conversation, Andy's friend never introduced his friend. Andy thought that was weird. He figured that there must be people that hate him, and maybe his friend's friend was one of them, and that's why he wasn't being introduced.

He opened up this topic for listeners. Most of them say it was most likely an etiquette faux pas. Andy's friend, caught up talking to Andy, simply forgot to introduce his friend. Still others thought that Andy's friend had forgotten his friend's name, perhaps, because it may simply have been some business colleague that he was entertaining.

The most interesting caller (though not the most interesting call) was the guy who apparently started the whole "Andy Polley" tape snippet. Apparently, there was some talk about Rafy Palmeiro or some player like that being traded, and Pollin had taken some stance about it, and the caller said "Andy Polley, you are an idiot!", not realizing his name was Andy Pollin.

From then on, they would play the snippet "Andy Polley", and Mr. Tony still refers to him by that name. It was amazing to hear that caller call back because I had always wondered about the story behind the "Andy Polley" name.

Now, I have to say, Andy's theory that he wasn't introduced to this guy was a bit of a troll. Troll isn't the right word. A troll is more like a negative comment which provokes many defenders to write in response. For example, suppose there's a Star Trek newsgroup. Someone writes that "Star Trek" sucks. So others come to its gallant defense and criticize the poor chap. The provocation is a troll, meant to cause people to respond.

In this case, it's like a, hmm, what's the opposite of a troll? An elf? Something. By hypothesizing that this guy wouldn't introduce his friend because his friend hated Andy? I mean come on. So callers were calling in saying they loved Andy, and what person could hate Andy. I mean, talk about ego-stroking. Andy had to be faux modest. "Please, in this business, some people hate you".

While the elfing might have made a pleasant blog, I wasn't planning on that.

What was more interesting to me was the necessity of having to formally introduce a friend. Andy himself points out that these introductions do him no good. He quickly forgets the person's name, as he's introducing himself. There's the appearance of a slight when a friend doesn't introduce you, because it makes it more challenging to strike up a discussion, but think about it.

Why do we need to know the name of the person we're talking to? It's only important if you want to establish contact again? I only care that I'm talking to Sarita or Samir if I care to talk about them again or see them again. Then, it's helpful to say "Sarita" rather than "that Indian chick that you were with last time we spoke". Still, the average person feels a distance from a person if they don't know their name.

One possibility, which I thought of, and which was probably unlikely, but still occurred to me nonetheless. Perhaps this gentleman friend was more than a friend, and his friend didn't want to establish that his friend was really a significant other, except not so significant as to be public information.

For some reason, introducing friends to friends usually ends up being awkward. You have to be unusually extroverted or the friend has to be unusually attractive to make this work, unless, for some reason, you meet at, say, a Star Trek convention, or any sort of convention, where there is common interest.

For example, you never know how easy-going the other person is going to be. I was at lunch, and someone remarked that a temporary office-mate of his wanted to convince him to use a Mac for his work, and how it was superior to using a PC. He wanted none of that religious debate, and stated so, whereas, I'm sure, the other guy wanted to evangelize the goodness of the Mac (they are SO good, though). The attempt at nicety was rebuffed. What can you do?

I have a friend who's actually nicer initially than the more you know him. Strange how that works out. One of my housemates prefers to seem like an ass right away, so that he seems better later on, when he isn't being an ass.

Andy Polley had me thinking about how we meet friends of friends, and how this invariably fails to work out. When you have two people that have a great deal
of history, and then two people who have no history, it always seems incredibly awkward for the no-history folks to talk to one another, as if they've been thrown together in this artificial setting, and been told "make friends".

Still, one would argue, that's not the point. It's just politeness, which really means it's just convention. We follow it because we're supposed to, and that's why it's polite. Which makes it silly.