Merriam-Webster defines friend as “one attached to another by affection or esteem; acquaintance.” Not to quibble with the dictionary, but my definition is a little stricter than merely “acquaintance.” To me, friendship involves a lot more of the loyalty and caring exhibited by Jonathan and David. And it’s a lot more like the sentiment expressed in Proverbs 17:17—”A friend loves at all times.”

A friend, a genuine friend, cares through thick and thin, through both prosperity and adversity. A friend celebrates your accomplishments, mourns your setbacks, sticks up for you, provides encouragement, is willing to listen, forgives your mistakes, and laughs with you, never at you. True friends sincerely want the best for each other and invest time in nurturing that relationship. At least, this is the type of friend I aspire to be to those I care most about. Not always successfully, but it’s what I try for.

Only a limited few of my acquaintances meet this tough criteria, however. Which begs the question: Why is it so hard to find such friends? What it is that connects us in true friendship to a handful of people in our lives? Just what are those indefinable qualities that drive only some of our social acquaintances beyond the superficial into the type of deep and lifelong caring, loyalty, respect, and trust that most of us long for?

I have no answers, only questions. But I can venture some personal opinions on the subject. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “the only way to have a friend is to be one.” I believe this is where we often miss the boat. Being a friend requires time and energy—two things not everyone is willing to give in equal proportion. I know people who are friendly enough when it’s convenient to their schedules, or when they need something in return. I’ve been guilty of it myself. I have acquaintances I never hear from until they need a favor, and others who talk on and on yet somehow never find time to show an interest in what’s important to me. These are people I am happy enough to socialize with when the opportunity arises, but they are not who I would depend on in a time of need. Perhaps they aren’t “wired” with these friendship characteristics. Or maybe they’ve simply reserved that depth of friendship for others in their lives with whom they share more in common.

It’s true that common interests bond us with certain people more than others. Common hobbies, similar beliefs, shared life experiences. I know I’ve spent the last few years growing friendships with people of faith as my own faith has become more important to me. And digging deeper into my past, I count among my closest friends those who knew me as I was emerging into the person I would become, in my childhood and college years and beyond.

Some of these people in my life advanced rapidly toward friendship, while others developed more slowly over time. Either way, these are not acquaintances that will come and go. They are friends for life. They have earned my loyalty, and I hope I have earned theirs. Their numbers may be relatively few, but fortunately, it’s not the quantity of our friends that is important, but the quality. I’d rather have a few deeply meaningful friendships than a few hundred superficial ones.

In this area, I’ve been richly blessed. For example, when Kent unexpectedly earned himself an ambulance ride and a night in the hospital last year with chest pains, a small handful of local friends immediately offered to assist with the kids if we needed it. Though it proved unnecessary, I have not forgotten the generous offers from friends willing to upend their own schedules with no notice. These are the friends I know I can count on. And I’d do the same for every single one of them. In a heartbeat.

In closing, I leave you all with this quote:

Do not save your loving speeches for your friends till they are dead; Do not write them on their tombstones, speak them rather now instead.

~ Anna Cummins

And so, to my friends whom I love dearly:

I’d like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me. I’d like to be the help that you’ve been always glad to be; I’d like to mean as much to you each minute of the day, as you have meant, old friend of mine, to me along the way.

~ Edgar A. Guest

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Fittingly, as I was in the middle of drafting this entry this afternoon, one of my best friends from college, whom I met on my first day there just over 20 years ago now, called for a lovely chat, just because. I can’t think of a better reason to be interrupted from writing on the topic of friendship than to talk with one of those friends. Hi, Jill!

My darling husband expressed disbelief that he was only #7 on my list of celebrity crushes (I saved the best for last, I swear!), and he quibbled with one or two of my selections. He also wants to know if because I published it on the Internet, is that the same as laminating it a la Ross in Friends? (Confidential to Kent: It’s not THAT kind of list!!)

A college friend reminded me that the time we bought smutty magazines, we lost them on the campus safety shuttle. It was a frantic and embarrassing few moments as we searched for them. Fortunately we found them again before we had to explain exactly what we were looking for. She was also impressed with my memory of our trip, but the truth is I wouldn’t have remembered half of it had it not been for my scrapbook and the video.

The navigationally challenged friend who got lost in Washington, D.C.
wrote to reminisce about the hilarity of seeing the “Welcome to Maryland” sign when they had already exited that fine state some time earlier and were supposed to be safely on the OTHER side of our nation’s capital. He also laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of the passenger dubbed “mapmaster.” I personally think they were all too busy reading the smutty magazines.

Another friend told me the other day that reading my posts reminded her how alike we are. Especially when it comes to shopping at Target. She said she could have written that post herself. It’s so nice to have friends who feel my pain!

My dad complained once that my references to him here involve him either lecturing me or grounding me. Hey, I can’t help it if that is the stuff that makes good stories. Besides, if the shoe fits…. Oops, now I’m going to hear it for writing about him complaining! He also really enjoys my blog and hopes I’m saving all this stuff in case I decide to write a book one day.

And now in reading this post and looking at the topics that inspire feedback from those who know me personally, it sure makes my blog sound frivolous! Celebrity crushes? Smutty magazines? Shopping? That’s not what my blog is about at all! How did that stuff sneak in here? But the stories and observations that spawned the references are funny. At least I hope so, or I wouldn’t have written about them. (Except the celebrity crushes, which came from a dreaded meme.)

The good times began before the trip even started, in the planning. The three of us who flew put together a travel kit for those who were driving. Our totally cool kit included emergency snack rations, reading material (including, if I remember correctly, some magazines of questionably smutty nature), a mix tape of driving and travel-themed songs, and probably a few other things to help pass the time.

But the best addition to the kit was the “Official Guide to Wasting the Next 26-28 Hours,” authored by me and one of my flying friends for those who were making the long drive. It was 10 pages chock full of trivia for the weary travelers to answer about themselves, each other, and the journey, along with some other deep and absurd questions, just to give them interesting things to talk about along the way. I still have this guide in one of my college scrapbooks—both a blank version and the one completed by that crazy group. I’m not sure how I ended up as the keeper of the completed document, but I’m glad I was. This morning I pulled it out and read the entire thing. And laughed out loud many, many times at the memories. I could share some of the responses here, but much of it relates to personal information and inside jokes, so it’s probably only funny to me and those who knew us then. Those guys were jokesters! But I also know tidbits like who caused the group to be late leaving, who took up the most space in the car, who asked “how much longer” first, who fell asleep first, who were the fastest and slowest drivers, who talked the most, and who was the crankiest traveler.

We gave them some record-keeping assignments too, so among other things they tried to keep track of the number of McDonald’s they passed (lost count after 15), the number of accidents they almost had (2), and the number of times they got lost (2). I recall that they unintentionally drove around Washington D.C. twice, and the unlucky driver who missed that turn did not live it down for the rest of our college years. We later made up a song about it to the tune of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” I still remember some of the words to it:

“______, you get so lost, sometimes. Take us around D.C. again. When I want to go to Florida, I’d rather not, in your car. Take us, around again, take us back to the place we started. All your instincts, they were wrong…”

All these years later I still think of it every time I hear that song.

The rest of the week was lots of fun (so much fun that we did it again the following year with even more people). We had several days at the beach, a couple of theme park trips, lots of singing and dancing to my mom’s jukebox and playing pinball, and a birthday celebration for one among us whose birthday fell during the week. And just generally driving around in my convertible and hanging out piled on my waterbed. Most of which is heavily documented with photographic evidence.

The stuffed purple cow of a friend factored heavily into our amusements. That cow was always under attack, and not just during spring break. We were on a mission to exterminate the ghastly bovine. At one point, it was “skewered” by my dad’s Spanish swords that hung crossed over our staircase. Another time it was set adrift on a raft in the swimming pool. I don’t recall how he got into either of those situations. I of course had nothing to do with it. There is also video footage of the cow getting stomped on and assaulted with a coat hanger, and a foiled attempt to nuke him in the microwave. One evening we came home from the day’s excursions to find that even my parents had gotten into the act. They had laid out the cow in a wooden “coffin” surrounded by candles in a makeshift memorial. I always did have cool parents—I know my friends thought so. But maybe not the friend who was the owner of the cow!

And the things we ate that week! We kept a list, which is also now part of the permanent record in my scrapbook. Let’s just say that it inspired my roommate and me to host a “Pig Out Party” in our dorm room upon our return, recreating the same junk that constituted our diet during that spring break week. It must have recently been Girl Scout cookie time in Florida, because they were a daily staple in our vacation menu. My mom always bought boxes and boxes of those cookies and froze them so we’d have them throughout the year. That year, I’m sure we cleaned her out.

These are just a few of the memories that came to mind when I dragged out my college scrapbooks this morning for the first time in ages. There are oh so many more. I’m still in touch with many of the friends who were on this trip—three of whom I saw last weekend, and one or two of them even read this blog!

I’ve been thinking lately about how high school has unexpectedly played a big role in my life this year, the result of an online message board through which I reconnected with old classmates I haven’t spoken to, or in some cases even thought about, in 17 years or more. I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into rebuilding those old connections and forming what I hope will now be cherished lifelong friendships. I’ve also been doing a lot of reminiscing about my growing up years, and some of those stories have appeared in this blog. Many more will follow, I’m sure.

Yet really, I think it is more of my college experience that formed who I am today. It was in college where I began to break out of my “shy” shell. It’s my college friends who I still keep in touch with all these years later. These are friendships that have withstood the test of time. One of those friends is getting married on Saturday. I’ll be attending her wedding in Boston. I can’t even begin to say how much I’m looking forward to that. I’m hoping the mini-reunions of this weekend will jog my memory for some of my good college stories, which need to make their way here too. I will be seeing several longtime friends over the next couple of days and expect to return with lots of good fodder for this blog!

Writing Prompt for 6/28/05:

You can’t wait for your class reunion so you can tell all of your old school chums about what?

My Response:

This is hilarious. My next class reunion isn’t for three years, but I’ve already told quite a few of my classmates everything there is to know, thanks to our class of ’88 message board. Most importantly, although still introverted, I think I’ve proved that I’m no longer painfully shy and that perhaps I would have been worth talking to, had I tried harder back then to focus on the things I had in common with people instead of being worried about the things I didn’t.

So instead I’ll use this opportunity to wax philosophic on the joys of getting reacquainted with those who knew me when. Because of that message board, I have gotten to know former classmates much better than I ever did when I went to school with them, and in a way that I don’t think would have been possible had I simply run into them at a reunion. I’m quite impressed with the great things my classmates are doing, in big ways and small. And I’m amazed at how easy it’s been to jump into conversations like no time has passed at all. That’s an impressive feat for the girl who was “Most Shy.”

For certain, having participated in the message board for the last few months will make the 20th reunion a whole different experience for me than it would have been otherwise. These are people that I grew up with, even if I didn’t know them all well, and it only took me 17 years to appreciate that shared history. It’s been a truly eye opening experience and has taught me some things that I want to impart to my kids about their own self worth, when they reach that age.

Things are quieter around the message board these days as some of the initial fixation has worn off. It is perhaps not quite so addictive, but still lots of fun. And even if it ultimately goes bust (which I hope it does not), it will always hold a special place in my heart because of the individual new and renewed friendships that have developed. Who knew I would turn out to be such a sentimentalist?