On friends

I hate people who, after just meeting someone for a couple of times, immediately tell people that "Oh, yeah, he/she's my friend."

When people ask, I say "Yeah, I know him/her."

I wouldn't exactly call him a friend, because to be friends with each other means that the two of you share a deeper connection than just being, say, classmates at a birthing class.

Which brings me to the topic of second-degree friends... also known as friends of friends. For example, in my case, my second-degree friends are Eric's barkada, and their respective girlfriends/boyfriends.

I've known some of them for as long as I've known Eric (six years) and there was a time that I got together with them more often than my own friends.

But I still can't call all of them "friends" in the truest sense of the word.

Maybe it's because everytime we meet, the conversations are pretty similar -- "How's work?" "Have you watched this latest movie?" "What do you think of Kris Aquino's latest scandal?" "Did you hear what happened to one-of-Eric's-first-degree-friends?"

Don't get me wrong, sometimes we talk about other stuff: like another second-degree friend gave birth, so we talk a bit about parenting and baby-stuff. Another is taking up her MA, so we talk about that too.

But for the life of me, I can't talk to them the way I talk to my first degree friends. Wherein we can talk for hours. About anything. And everything. And sometimes it's not even about things we have in common or shared experiences. It can shift from the latest Harry Potter to the lovelife of a sibling (tsismosa namin, 'no?) We talk about our goals, wants, and aspirations; as well as our crushes, awful bad dates, and best books read.

For example:

With first degree friends, a conversation about Ruffa Gutierrez and Yilmaz Bektas can shift into a conversation about our types of guys, and then shift to reminisces about awful dates, and then shift to why Turkey isn't such a bad place to go to.

With second-degree friends, we talk about Ruffa and Yilmaz, period.

With my first degree friends, I laugh till my stomach hurts.

With second degree friends, I sometimes find my mouth hurting from too much forced smiles.

It's not to say they're bad people; if any of them asked me for a favor, I'd be glad to help, just as I know that they're a text away if I need something I know they're good at. They visited me when I gave birth and I text them during their birthdays. But they're not the people I text when I want to rant about an annoying contestant in Deal or No Deal; and I don't think about them if I want to try out a new restaurant.

So the questions is, do I still consider them friends? Or should I just say "Yeah, I know him/her?"