My BFF

Being 2384134809 miles away from home is hard. 3,500 miles away from home – also hard. It’s hard to leave behind family, and although I don’t have many friends, it’s hard to leave behind the special ones. This week (for the sake of the blog), I’m thankful for my best friend, and all the weird things we’ve encountered in the past 7 years. I’m actually thankful for her every day, but whatev. You get the point.

I remember the day we became best friends. Sitting on basement stairs late at night in our PJ’s, bear-hugging and doing all that emotional stuff that BFF’s do – it became official. We’re best friends forever. No turning back now.

Since that day, we’ve had our share of adventures. A few years back, we went out of state for a concert. She dared me to be brave, for once, and I somehow ended up begging an employee for upgrade tickets. I cranked up the charm (or something like that) when he asked me why he should give me tickets, and I exploded with “We’ve been here for 8 hours and we drove a long way and we’ve been standing in the sun all day and there are drunk people everywhere!” And that annoying little ramble got us front-row tickets. That’s not true. They weren’t front-row at all, but wouldn’t that have made the story so much better? But they were significantly better than where we were. And after a long night at the concert, we ended up back at the hotel, bored out of our minds eating pizza – big surprise there. We went to the front desk, and told the nice young man that we weren’t going to stay the night. “Your state is boring,” I said. I didn’t realize it was such an insult, but my poor BFF was mortified. She will never let me live that one down. She even told that story to EVERYONE I KNOW during her maid-of-honor speech. Yeah… thanks for that…

So on top of insulting New Hampshire front desk clerks and embarrassing wedding speeches, we really have been through it all. We’ve done it all. I know people say that all the time, but we’re for real. She was my first official visitor when I moved across the country… jumping the gun so quickly that she got to camp with us on air mattresses and all. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Graduation vacation to Florida, endless sleepovers and late night talks, roller-blading in the basement, sharing clothes, shopping, getting to my house two minutes after the mister proposed (stalker?), Dairy Queen dates (spilling chocolate ALL over my jeans right before work?) McDonald’s dates, Subway dates (why does everything revolve around food?), picking me up at the airport with a glittery “Welcome Home” sign from our honeymoon, helping each other with homework (Lit & Media video – block of cheese in the pool), 3AM drives across the state for things that could have absolutely waited until the morning, beach days in the middle of winter, late-night mission to find a kitten… why are we so strange?

I know if you’re anybody but my lovely little BFF, you probably hate this blog right about now. But yesterday after a creepy old man was revving his engine at me, and he stalled his truck, and I busted out laughing enough to make the guy blush, I knew nobody else would understand the humor except for her. We are one in the same person, separated by 3,500 miles, but what’s a little distance?