Friendship is very strange. I’ve had countless best friends in my 19 years, and even after I learned that my ex-best friend wasn’t the nicest person around, I still find myself thinking about that time we were six years old, and we put a sprinkler under my trampoline and slid off on accident. Or how my longest best friend’s mom is the only person who has ever given me a time-out because we put the TV on louder than the “M” in volume when we weren’t supposed to, so we had to sit on opposite sides of the couch for 20 minutes instead of finishing that episode of Barney.
The other day, I was shopping in Banana Republic, and I got a Facebook notification that said someone who was one of my best friends from age three to 12 had tagged me in a picture. I assumed she had gotten hacked and it was one of those "tag 12 people to win a new car" type deal, but I opened it anyway. What it actually said was, “Do you remember who your best friend was when you were ten years old? Tag them if you’re Facebook friends.”
So that was weird. I haven’t spoken to her since maybe junior year of high school, and even then we only talked about who our favorites were on that season of The Glee Project. We had friend-broken-up in middle school because I made new friends, and then realized my previous best friend was a drama queen, to put it nicely. After that, I would always reflect on the way she embarrassed me in third grade by telling the boy I liked that I liked him, or how she did it again in sixth grade. With her clearly cut out of my life, I saw everything about her that was not very nice. But for some reason, after the initial confusion wore off, I was honestly happy to have been tagged in that picture.
Now, I’m remembering the time we were in the talent show in third grade, and how we were in it three times a year by the time we were in fifth grade. She introduced me to Tim Burton and games on Yahoo’s homepage. She was the first person I went to the movies with without an adult. She taught me how to do eyeshadow when we were too young, and we even hit puberty (to put it nicely) within three days of each other.
Like I said, I’ve had a number of best friends, and I’ve definitely had a number of bad best friends. And now, I have really cool friends who are genuinely good people. And if I befriend someone who is not that great, I have years of experience and can easily identify that before I waste my time with the person. But even with the worst people, I’ve made some pretty cool (and often embarrassing) memories that, with time, are great to remember.
