WE’RE FRIENDS!

Us back in the day

Today is the birthday of one of my oldest and most fabulous friends (HAPPY BIRTHDAY!). And by oldest, I don’t mean she is old. Heaven forbid, as actually the brat is a month younger than me, and as she points out, will always be younger than me no matter how old we get.

Because my family felt the urge to move every time I had settled down into comfortable friendships, I don’t have any “lifetime friends” as it were. However, I have people like my friend Kristyn that even though I haven’t known my entire life, I would consider a lifetime friend.

I met Kristyn after moving in middle school. In a small town where everyone pretty much already knew everyone, she was one of the few people willing to make friends with the new girl. Of course, Kristyn could probably make friends with anyone she wanted to. She’s a Gemini, and she can charm you into almost anything. It’s lucky for us she chooses to use this power for good, and only occasionally for her own devious purposes.

Middle and high school was easy for our friendship, because while we didn’t have every class together, since we were in the same sort of courses we could count on seeing the other at least once a day. We could bitch about homework, whisper about secret crushes, and giggle at anything we found ridiculous (meaning everyone else in the school, and sometimes ourselves). There was nothing we couldn’t discuss. No moment too humiliating (such as ripping pants from dancing too vigorously) or too personal.

However, after high school hanging out was crazy difficult. We went to college in different areas. It was over a 2 hour drive, without traffic, between our schools, and while we’d visit each other at least once a year it wasn’t something we could do every weekend and stay sane. During breaks, we found it hard to coordinate schedules because we’re both workaholics that were unwilling to lose hours as we needed the money. Still, we kept up to date on what was happening, and would pop in on the other while working just to say “hey!” and maybe drop off a snack or drink.

Once I moved off to another state for work, seeing each other got even harder as when I was back I typically was seeing my family. It doesn’t help that neither one of us is great at phone conversations. I hate calling people. I also hate texting. Not exactly conducive to staying in touch.

Us now

Yet despite all that, I never feel that we’ve fallen apart. When we see each other we catch up on any big life events, but underneath it all we’ve stayed the same. Nothing Kristyn has done in the past few years while I’ve been gone has shocked me, and while I’m always running into utterly ridiculous situations, I’d be willing to bet that while Kristyn laughs at them, nothing really shocks her either based on our past experiences.

So while some people think it’s weird that I still consider someone from high school, that I rarely see, a super close friend, it makes sense to me.

Of course this begs the question of how you define friendship. Obviously, there are different levels of friends. Some will always be closer than others. Sometimes you might meet someone new that you just click with in a whole new way. But at what point do you get past that level of “acquaintances” to close friends? Or from that, to BFFs?

People never have “the TALK” for friends like they do for relationships. Seriously, for your last few serious boy/girlfriends, did you not at some point define the relationship? When you were exclusive, when you breaking up… but have you ever called a friend to say “I think we should see other people?” Have you ever started off a day of shopping by saying “ok, so I think by now we’re comfortable referring to each other as BFs, right?” No!

Now in college my group of friends was a little obsessed with re-defining things, such as what constitutes a sport. So of course we also tackled this idea of when you technically become friends with a person.

I believe it was brought on by my classes with a certain person we called Emo Boy. He was another English major, so I ended up sharing several classes with him over a year. Somewhere during the second semester we ended up trading jokes, talking, and whatnot. Yet I wouldn’t say I felt comfortable inviting him out for drinks or something similar. One day we did something, maybe hung out after class? I don’t even know. Regardless, at that point my friends started joking that we were now friends.

But again, it wasn’t like we were texting, going to events together, anything like that. So somehow we decided that one only becomes officially “friends” with a person, as opposed to “classmates,” “buddies,” or “friendly acquaintances” by running up to that person randomly, and yelling “WE’RE FRIENDS!!”

Yelling is key. Whispering, or even talking in a normal voice, does not count. If that person doesn’t immediately disagree with the proposed friendship, they have implicated their consent to the friend contract. 

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I never ran up to Emo Boy and yelled “WE’RE FRIENDS!” I don’t think we were that comfortable. Yet every time I think about defining friendship now, this is what I think of. And I can guarantee that if I did this to Kristyn, she’d be cool with it. She’d probably call me a spaz, but nothing new there.