I was going to tell you about the phenomenal mess my life is but then I thought better of it.
I want to tell you about my best friend.
So, you know that time in second or third or fourth grade when everyone had friends but every girl needed a best friend? Maybe you don’t because maybe your childhood wasn’t filled with Buzzfeed-flavored nostalgia, complete with trapper keepers and Lisa Frank stickers and Nickelodeon, but for some of us, we understood that having a best friend was a necessity. It was a line on an elementary school resume, a way of proving to future friends that you had it together because you had a best friend. Allow me into your social circle because I have the ultimate reference. That’s how best friends worked when we were kids- you had sleepovers, you giggled, you watched movies together and passed notes and were, officially, best friends.
My best friend from back home moved into town in the third grade from Minnesota. I’m not a mega-social person and I wasn’t a socially-savvy kid, so bringing up memories that specifically involve people is like dredging the lake for sunken buoys, but it’s OK because as soon as I’m home, she remembers something and tells the story like there should have been movie cameras following us around. We sound epic or at the very least more interesting than I’m sure we actually were. There was always orange juice for me in the fridge at her house and I feel like I knew the inside of her pantry just as well as she did. There was a fort to explore (there's a new road there now) and when we grew up, music to play and hours of things to talk about. And whenever I’m back visiting her, it’s like no time has passed. I can sit and listen and laugh more than I have in years, I feel like, and it’s the most perfect thing.
I live a life of cliches and tired old acts, so of course the two of us went to different colleges in different states and developed our own lives, with our own new best friends. Of course we would- we’re independent women who spend plenty of time dreaming, and honestly, even high school took a toll on us, between separated by band and theater and going to different churches with different youth groups. When you’ve done the Millennial Shuffle*, you know that everything in life is malleable, including friendships. It’s not all Dawson’s Creek or Boy Meets World. Mr. Feeny isn’t going to move to college with you and your friends aren’t going to drop out and/or transfer to be near you. That’s a pipe dream.
So when I come back home from my job in a different part of the state and we talk about bands we like or shows we watch or things we’ve done and find that we’re still so much in sync, it makes me miss what we could have been. I have other friends, great friends, friends that I could start whole new blogs about, but sometimes I think that I could have lived in a house in Charleston, roadtripped with the windows down listening to Zeppelin and Cake, waited tables at the country club, and laid out every night for a semester watching the stars down in Chile. I mean, I’m happy with who I am and I can’t discredit the wonderful and lovely things that I’ve done, but I know that there’s a corner of my soul that could have been happy doing something else.
And then there’s nights like tonight where we went to a bar and had a couple of beers, listening to my best friend and her mom tell stories, while a second best friend listened and laughed and swapped anecdotes about teaching languages. We played songs on the jukebox and smiled at the people who walked in and mentioned things that her fiance would notice in a loud voice so he’d come over from behind the bar and spend a few minutes with us. Then, on my way out of her apartment complex, in true classy fashion, I misjudged the turn on the hill and ended up needing a tow truck. But my best friend, she’s been trained to never let them see you sweat, and so we assessed the damage, found a guy to come out and help us, and spent the intermediate half hour watching a British sitcom and laughing at the narratives behind the decorations in her temporary home. When the tow would only take cash and I had none, she never even batted an eye. My car got unstuck, I now have a list of new pop culture to bring into my life, and despite having a substantial problem, I feel so much better than I did before. All in all, it wasn’t a bad night.
So I’m going to hold on to that as I go on about my days. There’s a glorious freedom in knowing that life could have gone completely different and it wouldn’t have turned out that bad at all.
*The Millennial Shuffle is a complex dance staged for the children of families privileged enough to be thinking of higher education for their children, a dance full of angst and an over-abundance of encouragement and unfulfilled promises. The steps are as follows:
Step 1: Get good grades.
Step 2: Do a sport.
Step 3: Pick four extra curriculars.
Step 5: Become a leader in at least one of the organizations you’re involved in.
Step 5.5: Exhaust any and all energy overachieving at the high school level.
Step 6: Apply to college.
Step 7: Graduate by some miracle.
Step 8: Find a job. Or, more reasonably, don’t.
Repeat Steps 6-8 until the music runs out.
