Best Friends
I have had the same best friends since freshman year in high school. We all live in the same neighborhood, and I spend as much time with their families as I do with my own. The four of us completed myriad projects together in high school, helped each other through everything from Chemistry to Calculus to US History to endless English essays, and laughed every day. We are so very different, but somehow we complement each other and bring out the ridiculous joy that inevitably leads to infectious laughter and frivolity. We still laugh every day.
This month three of us are home again. We work, but as soon as we clock out of our respective jobs, a phone call brings us together for what I like to think of as "real life." It's funny - before I started working, I termed real life as hours spent earning a living and as days lived in solitary independence. What a skewed perception.
Real life is moments spent creating memories with the people we love. Real life is driving across the country for no reason other than to spend days together in a car. Real life is adding sixteen hours to the road trip to visit middle-of-nowhere Idaho because our best friend is camped there in the woods researching invasive species. Real life is talking for hours about movies and books and nothing at all, purely for the joy of sharing our lives. Real life is baking a three-layer cheesecake just for the heck of it. Real life is frosting our hands with ganache just to suck the chocolate off our fingers one by one, creating a ring of chocolate lipstick that reminds us of the old black and white movies.
Maybe they all had chocolate lipstick; we would never know the difference in black and white. Maybe we should make a black and white movie. The lipstick would never make it on screen, though. We would lick it all off with gleeful satisfaction within moments.
Years at college changed each of us, but the children we were still surface when we plan our adventures, watch old movies, debate the merits of books and of movies and of books made into movies, discuss the past and contemplate the future. My best friends have educated me on everything from the Beatles to fantasy to art to science. Our wonderful mixing of humanity invigorates me and makes me grateful for my incredible luck in finding such amazing people with whom to share my life. I know them intimately and love them dearly, and we still laugh every day.
This month three of us are home again. We work, but as soon as we clock out of our respective jobs, a phone call brings us together for what I like to think of as "real life." It's funny - before I started working, I termed real life as hours spent earning a living and as days lived in solitary independence. What a skewed perception.
Real life is moments spent creating memories with the people we love. Real life is driving across the country for no reason other than to spend days together in a car. Real life is adding sixteen hours to the road trip to visit middle-of-nowhere Idaho because our best friend is camped there in the woods researching invasive species. Real life is talking for hours about movies and books and nothing at all, purely for the joy of sharing our lives. Real life is baking a three-layer cheesecake just for the heck of it. Real life is frosting our hands with ganache just to suck the chocolate off our fingers one by one, creating a ring of chocolate lipstick that reminds us of the old black and white movies.
Maybe they all had chocolate lipstick; we would never know the difference in black and white. Maybe we should make a black and white movie. The lipstick would never make it on screen, though. We would lick it all off with gleeful satisfaction within moments.
Years at college changed each of us, but the children we were still surface when we plan our adventures, watch old movies, debate the merits of books and of movies and of books made into movies, discuss the past and contemplate the future. My best friends have educated me on everything from the Beatles to fantasy to art to science. Our wonderful mixing of humanity invigorates me and makes me grateful for my incredible luck in finding such amazing people with whom to share my life. I know them intimately and love them dearly, and we still laugh every day.
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