You and your friend are preparing for an interview. You’re not sure how it ended up happening, but here you are, about to be interviewed on the news. The camera turns to you and your friend, and your interviewer asks you the normal stilted awkward first question.
You, the practical movie star that you are, answer the question with grace and dignity and elaborate with the most profound knowledge. The interviewer, feeling content with the answer, asks their second question, slightly shifting their focus to your friend, but still looking at you both.
Once again, knowing that you are equipped to handle this question, take another swing to answer the question. This time, stumbling over your words a little bit, but still clearly answering the question.
The interviewer, now visibly trying to include your friend asks, “and did you have the same experience or was it pretty different?”
Your friend: “Yeah, pretty much.”
The interviewer, after waiting a couple of seconds thinking that they might continue, realizes that was the entirety of the answer.
They ask a couple other scripted questions, and then your moment of fame ends.
You now realize how different you and your friend are.
This is the friend that often tags along with other people, but no matter how cool the other people may be, everyone sees them as the cool person in the friendship.
Often, other people will make the friends, but the “silent cool kid” friend walks into the room after you and everyone would prefer to talk to and get to know them instead.
This is the friend that listens and takes everything in. They absorb conversations they hear and can make incredibly accurate assessments of the people they’ve met and everyone in the room they’re in.
As noted before, if this person is on an interview, prepare for the most succinct and unelaborated answers. They say things how they are and nothing else. It makes for a less interesting interview, but it also causes you to pay attention to them when they actually speak. In a group setting, if they start talking over the volume of everyone else, it’s usually worth listening to.
When you get to know this friend at a deeper level, you start to realize how deep their thoughts truly are. That their sense of humor is not at all what you thought. Their insight on topics you take for granted are profound.
The “silent cool kid” friend is often mistaken for being shy. It’s not so much that they’re shy as they are more purposeful than most people at who they choose to talk to and open up to.
The “silent cool kid” friend is a loyal and trusted friend that you can always depend on to be there and always depend on to listen and give critical but necessary advice.
Do whatever you can to keep these people in your life.