Friends in the mix

Last Thursday, I spent an hour on the phone with one of my IU friends. We covered how to convince her parents to let her go abroad for a semester, bar-hopping clothes for that night and who among our friends is hooking up with whom. \nI then spent the next hour on the phone with one of my old, non-IU friends, discussing her recent promotion, the cost of her Volvo's brake trouble and her inability to connect with her boyfriend's kids from his first marriage. \nPart of what makes my situation so surreal at times is that I have one foot in the collegiate world and one foot in the grown-up world. And here is a fact that I've learned well during my tenure straddling this weird line: It is not possible to mix these two worlds. Attempts to mix them will always end miserably, and more likely than not with at least one of the mixees pissed off at me, the mixer.\nI have tried several times to introduce my college friends to the people I grew up with. In theory, it seems simple. Oldest and dearest friends meet newest and freshest friends. You already have two things in common, you're here together right now and you all love me, so go to it! Bond! Trust me, it unfolds in real life even worse than it sounds on paper.\nI once brought my (Bloomington born and bred) friend Shelly out with some IU friends. Big mistake. One member of the IU group cracked an unfortunately timed joke about "townies." Shelly didn't appreciate his humor. Or me, for exposing her to it, I might add. \nMy most spectacular friend mixing failure involved my IU friends and Betsy, my beer guzzling, chain smoking, wild child of a best friend. In 15 years of friendship, I have never been able to keep up with her. When she came to visit me I figured she, of all people, would love running around with a bunch of college kids. And maybe she would have. But the IU group's first glimpse of Betsy was as she joyfully (and drunkenly) improvised some Dirty Dancing-esque lift moves with her equally drunk boyfriend, forcing everyone else on the dance floor to duck and scatter. My IU friends left in a hurry. \nFinally, here is a riddle for you. What happens when you drag Jo, your thirty year old, L.A. dwelling, yuppified best friend to a "keg and bonfire" college party thrown by your one and only frat-guy friend? I don't know either. But my mental images of the event all concluded with her dumping a keg cup of Budweiser over my head, kicking me in the shins with her pointy-toed Prada shoes and storming off to get a martini somewhere. We skipped the party, and my IU friend's feelings were hurt. But I'd learned my lesson by then. \nI love all of my friends, from both of my worlds. But trying to bring one into the other's environment is like trying to bring one of those trench dwelling sea creatures to the surface. They react unpleasantly to the change in atmosphere. Imploding? Exploding? Whatever. They 'plode. Unfortunately, my friends seem to react the same way when mixed, and I end up wiping up the mess afterwards. So now I just leave them in their natural environments. It's easier on all of us.