Manda -Pants

My best friend and I are living two completely different lives. We’re only best friends because we like each other so much. If we didn’t, we’d have probably lost touch by now. We’d be the types of friends that like each other’s pictures on facebook as an obligation. I might not actually care about her recent trip to Lake Tahoe, but I click the ‘like’ button cuz it’s easy and it lets her know that I’m glad she’s still having a good time in life and maybe her yellow striped bathing suit is cute. She’d occasionally comment on my posts with a ‘lol’ just to let me know that she still thinks I’m quirky even though she probably didn’t actually laugh out loud.

She's got a six-year marriage and a mortgage and a career and thinking about kids and I...well.

But, she’s awesome and I love her and we’ll be best friends forever. She’s one of the funniest, most genuine, kindest, completely normal, prettiest people I’ve ever known and we could laugh for hours and hours about nothing, tell the same stories over and over again without feeling repetitive, and listen to each other’s problems with the ear of a friend who knows the other so well that no advice or opinion needs to be given unless solicited. 

I figure, when we’re old, so old that it doesn’t make a difference at all how different our lives were because now we’re so wrinkly and feisty and grey that nothing matters more than the amount of fiber we add to our mojitos, we’ll just hang out on a front porch and bitch. And laugh. I’ll probably have a gross smoker’s laugh that will be completely unfair cuz I’ve never smoked and she’ll make fun of me for sounding like a man and I’ll tease her cuz her boobs that I was once so jealous of rest on her lap when she sits. It’ll be great. Right now we’ll stay friends even though we don’t see each other nearly as much as we’d like but one day we’ll grow old together.

I’ve read almost every Jane Austen novel (I’ve read JD Salinger and Ernest Hemingway too so don’t give me shit) and I remember her writing about friends. The main character describes the importance of being kind to everyone and I agree, but she also says that who you associate with, the people you call your friends, should be thoughtfully selected. Not everyone is a friend and that’s not cruel, it’s practical. If someone is a fool and you know they’re a fool and you call them your friend, it reflects poorly on you. Your friends reveal the person that you are, I think, in a similar way that your actions do and I’m happy to say that I’ve known the greatest person ever since I was in second grade – that’s 20 years of looking pretty damn cool by association. 

I should’ve thought to write this earlier, for her birthday or something, so I didn’t have to buy her a gift. Not that I bought her one when it was her birthday. She’s the generous one in the relationship, not me. 

-Age