The Stark Reality Of Best Friends

The Stark Reality Of Best Friends

August 19, 2016 - Kevin Harley

Growing up, there was always the pressure of having friends.  It’s something that we as humans crave, and even need.  They defined us as people.  If we didn’t have friends, we were categorized as losers or social rejects.  

I myself had few friends growing up.  Some of it was my personal choice, and to be honest, some was just the fact that my personality didn’t jive with a lot of those people that I went to high school with.  Let’s face it, an extremely intelligent, funny and handsome guy was too much competition.  I understood those factors then, and even more so now that I am a quasi-adult.  Ok, I also played Dungeons and Dragons, but I never, I repeat, never had a pocket protector.

I probably would have hung out with the kids from The Netflix Series, Stranger Things.  Well all of them except the creepy girl named eleven.

The concept of a best friend is a bit mind blowing.  30 plus years out of high school, and there are still some who spend their lives still living in high school.  They had best friends in high school and they have best friends now.  

I studied one woman who I knew all through school and still know all these years later.  We will call her Shelly.  To be honest with everyone, after high school, I moved on with my life.  I never got stuck in my high school years.  Today, those years are but a blur.  I grew up.  Got married.  Had kids and a college education and then the pain of employment.  Who has time to sit and think about high school?

But back on track.  We all know Shelly’s.  They live in the past.  The glory days of high school.  These Shelly’s controlled their best friends then, and now they control the best friends that they currently have.  So as I have sat and watched this woman, and others like her, it made me wonder what the benefit of the best friend really is.

That is a most coveted title you know.  Best Friend!  Isn’t that the person that you can rely on the most?  Isn’t that your “homey” (to coin a phrase from Barack Obama).  Honestly, outside of my wife, I have never had a best friend since I grabbed my diploma and sprinted for the doors.  

Until now.  You meet a dude who is just like you.  Who finds the same childhood antics that you still do and finds them funny.  A guy who drives his wife insane just like you do.  Life is great.  Music plays in the background whenever you are together and the world is a brighter place.

That’s when you find that you have left yourself wide open for destruction.  Yep.  That’s when the text comes as you're sitting at home in the morning thinking what’s my homey up to?  The phone blings and the text reads, “Sorry man, I am in Vegas until Sunday.  Going to have some fun!”  

Realization smacks you right between the eyes as your best friend abandons you and jets for Vegas with his wife.  Hello cruel world!  And then……. Depression set in.