My girlfriend was always telling me that I needed more friends to hang out with. We had moved to a new town, and while she had made tons of friends through work I was having a more difficult time. It's usually harder for a guy to make real friends; we usually just bullshit at work and go home at the end of the day. I had all but given up hope when I met Jason while fishing one day.
I had been looking forward to cooler weather and the trout stocking at my local lake, but that morning was cold and much windier than the weather had reported. I hunched forward in my camp chair, trying to will the fish to bite when a truck pulled up. He was in his early twenties, like me, and had brought his girlfriend along.
I waved, as any fisherman would, and he asked the obligatory, "How are they biting?" It was small talk, and I welcomed it. He called to his girlfriend, Jennifer, and asked if she was going to get out of the truck.
"No, it's too damn cold out there. I can't believe you told me it was going to be a nice day to fish. I'll just play on my phone and wait for you to get done."
Jason rolled his eyes, set up his camp chair a little way down the bank, and cast in his line. The fish weren't biting, but before long we had struck up a nice conversation. We were both into woodworking, both had construction jobs, and both had girlfriends that weren't all that into the outdoors. A few hours later and I decided to head home.
As I was loading up my rods Jason walked up by my truck and handed me his business card. He said, "Next time you want to go fishing, give me a call. We can ditch the bitches and do some serious fishing."
I drove home excited about the possibility of having a real friend in the area, and when I told my girlfriend she was ecstatic. I would finally get to enjoy my hobbies and interests with someone else, she said, and boy was she right. Over the next few weeks Jason and I went fishing multiple times, and I invited him over to see the my new table saw in my workshop.
It was my one day off alone in over a month, and when Jason showed up at my house I had a beer ready for each of us and the heat turned up to be comfortable in my workshop. He hadn't arrived empty handed either, having bought a fifth of whiskey. We bullshitted, talked about tools and projects we had completed, and drank some of his whiskey. He asked if I had a TV in my workshop, so I uncovered the small smart TV I kept in my cramped office and took it out to the working area.
"Do you have cable?", he asked, "I saw a show about old houses the other day that was amazing."
