People in mental bins

Proverbially speaking we all have a RELATIONOMETER, very akin to the conventional mercury thermometer. Although I’d like to assume family and blood ties are not applicable for usage on the relationometer because our emotions associated with family are innate and not acquired. We all unconsciously dip people in the relationometer every now and then and delve in the findings.
The calibrations on the relationometer start off with passive acquaintances. Facets of anyone being a passive acquaintance is occasional handshakes, not recalling their names making it embarrassing for you especially when you have to reciprocate adding them in your cell phone address book. Mind you many of them I am sure are amazing people but it is unfortunate one party or the other never gets time to get to know the other because maybe fate destined that way or maybe it was an individuals’ choice.
The mercury rises for someone who is an active acquaintance. Needless to say one recalls their names and their usually good lunch out colleagues whose claim to fame is their ability to align everyone on the corporate gossip, sleazy jokes and are generally deemed laughter companions.
Further up the gauge you have friends. I guess anyone whose life inherently we track would find the mercury inching up to the friends’ index on the relationometer. Individuals here in most likelihood would be people we have known growing up, academic days especially school. One keeps abreast on their movements in academics, career, marriage etc. The other day I met a host of people from my A-levels and it is amazing even though I rarely talked to them it was fabulous to think of them as friends albeit so much had changed; the now reflected the hoarse voice, receding hair lines, shrinking arteries yet expanded wallets and highly decorative pretty wives. I guess it has to do with the knowledge that it is these same people who form the two pillars of the bridge connecting the past and the present.
Bosom friends on the relationometer I feel are not even friends in a proverbial way. Their people you know who exist as beautiful celestial bodies in the higher scheme of things orbiting around you and have this amazing gravitational pull in your life. A pull so taut and profound, rendering it impossible to encapsulate their existence in a word, that would reflect how their presence affects us. Their movement on the relationometer starts from the ebb and every graduation comes around as a result of investment required of every relationship. The investment comes in terms of developing mutual trust, coming good in trying times, connecting etc. These are people you pluck out in your walks in the garden of life at various stages of growing up. Anything in your life is bound to affect there’s and feelings and emotions cease to remain an individual phenomenon and become shared miracles. Once anyone reaches the bosom friend mark, the mercury levels for them is an act of permanence; you get warped in your life, talk to them after ages and you realize time surely can be bent and squeezed with no implication of the quality of relationship going down.