The Six Degrees of Friendship

This morning I took my little boy for the necessary, but completely unpleasant for all parties involved, task of getting his annual flu shot. My little stud took it like a champ and didn’t shed one tear…won’t his Daddy be proud of what a big boy he’s become! As I sat in the reception room waiting for the nurse to pop her head out of the doorway to the exam rooms and declare that we had indeed been chosen to enter, I got out my Iphone and took a minute to catch up on a little Facebook time. Ok, for those of you who are on Facebook with me, you know I practically live on there and really have no need to “catch up” but just go with it for the sake of this story. I clicked on my “notifications” page and was delighted to see that my dear friend from Colorado had commented on a Halloween photo of my little studmuffin. As I read her comment, I could feel myself getting choked up, as I always do whenever I think about or see anything from this particular friend. No other friend in my life has ever had this effect on me. Most people in my life know that I am a complete and total “non-crier”, unless of course I am really mad or extremely drunk. I started thinking about why this one person always causes me to react in a way that is so out of character for me. I realized that the reason is because she was my first “Mom-friend.” As I thought about this concept, I thought about how much your friendships change and evolve over the course of your life. I determined that there are about six different degrees of friends that I’ve encountered along my journey thus far.

The first group is my childhood friends. These are the friends who knew me before I became the blatantly honest and sometimes a tad bit irrational woman that I am today. They knew me in my innocence. They knew me when my top priorities in life were what Santa Claus was going to bring me for Christmas and whether my Mom was going to take me to the Burger King drive through after ballet class for a double cheeseburger and large fry. These were the kids that I couldn’t wait to play with after school, and I couldn’t wait to go over to their homes on the weekends for all-sorts of adventures and fun. That’s right, FUN. Remember when FUN was all that really mattered? For those of you from my generation or older, do you remember that we used to be able to play outside until it got dark and never worry that some psychopath was going to snatch us right out of our front yard? Yep, those were the good old days. I am fortunate enough to still talk to a couple of my childhood friends, and I’m lucky as hell that they still put up with me.

The second crew of friends that is absolutely impossible for me to forget are my high school friends. Do I really have to say anything else about how important your friends are in high school? I mean, they are totally like the only thing that matters!! I remember that my world 100% revolved around two things: the telephone and passing notes in class. I was in high school before email, before Facebook, before Twitter, before the next God-knows-what IT thing that will be the go-to social networking site for teens to indulge in. Hell, I didn’t even have a cell phone until senior year and the thing looked pretty identical to the one that Zach Morris carried around on Saved By The Bell. I had the time of my life in high school. I loved every minute of it, and there was just nothing I loved more than my friends. When you really think about it, how could life get much better than living under your parents’ roof for free, going to a place every single day where you were surrounded by your closest peeps, then spending all weekend getting into tons of unavoidable mischief? Whether it was stealing wooden statues of Petunia Pig out of someone’s front yard or sledding at midnight at the local elementary school with a case of beer on hand and not for one second worrying that the cops would show up, these were some of the greatest memories I’ve ever had. Though I may never talk to some of them ever again, my “crew” will forever be irreplaceable. And to my co-conspirator on the whole Petunia Pig incident, you are my one-in-a-million friend and I can’t wait till we check into the nursing home together someday. You are definitely a member of Friend Category #6. Read on.

Ok, on to the third degree of friends, COLLEGE BUDDIES! I can sum this category up pretty quick: Beer, football, frat row, Spring Break in Cancun, beer, band parties, a dorm room that looked like something out of an episode of Hoarders on A&E, late-night calzones from Bellaroma Deli, beer, FREE beer at those band parties, skipping class to watch The Price is Right, and let’s see…what am I forgetting? Oh yeah, BEER! My best gal from this category has recently moved into Friendship Degree #6. You know who you are so keep reading for your shout-out from me.

Friend category #4 is a funny one. By this point, most of us are out of college and married, and now we have the pleasure of having “couple friends.” Sometimes I think that finding good “couple friends” who don’t hit the floor and cringe every time their phone rings and they know it is me and my husband and they don’t want to get sucked into another agonizing dinner date filled with our lame jokes is much harder than finding a husband was. Searching for potential “couple friends” is a lot like dating. Typically, I meet the wife first and she and I really hit it off, because quite honestly there are very few women in this world that I don’t hit it off with initially. We then decide that it would be “so fun to get our hubbies together!”, so we set up the first introduction. Telling the hubby about our plans with our “awesome new friends” usually goes something like this: (note: all names are ficticious) “Honey, on Saturday night Sally and Jim asked us over to their house for drinks. If things go well, maybe we can have them over here for dinner next weekend!” After that first meeting of drinks with Sally and Jim, the hubby and I talk about the night the whole way home speculating on how things went. “I think that they really liked us! That Jim is a real cut-up, and Sally is SO sweet even though she is completely anal about using coasters on her Pottery Barn coffee table. Do you think they will call us???” To all the married couples out there, don’t lie! You’ve been through a scenario very similar to this one. In all honesty, my husband and I are extremely lucky. We’ve managed to find some top-of-the-line “couple friends” who seem to tolerate our antics just fine. At least I think they do!

My second to last degree of friendship goes back to the friend who I mentioned at the beginning of this post. My first “Mom- friend.” There is no one else in this world who can ever be my first “Mom-friend” ever again, so I felt that putting her into her own separate group was the right thing to do. When I had my son, my husband and I were living in Colorado just south of Denver. We’d only been there a couple years and we really didn’t know anyone. Essentially, it was just the two of us and our little bundle of joy trying to make it through the first few months as brand new parents. I look back on that time and I can’t believe I’m still married. I’ve never loved someone so much one minute and completely loathed them in the next. In talking to other mommies over the past three years, I’ve found that this is pretty much the norm. And for those of you reading this who don’t have kids yet and think that your guy is the most wonderful man on the planet and you can’t imagine thinking a negative thought about him for a second…YOU JUST WAIT HONEY! Ok, I’m not going to get off on any tangents here, so back to my first “Mom-friend.” My son was born in March, and spring in Colorado is really gorgeous, so I spent most of my mornings out walking with the stroller to try and get my fat butt back into my skinny jeans! I remember the exact morning when I met my first “Mom-friend”, who I will refer to from this point forward as my Savior. I am not a super-duper religious person, but I do believe in God. I believe in talking to God and I believe that if there are things in your life that you can’t handle, giving them to God to take off your hands seems to work every time. This particular morning was a rough one for me. I was just feeling completely over-exhausted and especially lonely. I literally looked up to the beautiful blue sky above me and in my head I asked God to send me a friend. How pathetic is that? I mean, there are people who are truly suffering in this world and here I am, the suburban housewife, asking God to send me a FRIEND! Well, God must have thought my request was perfectly acceptable given my circumstances, and thirty minutes later, my Savior was given to me. I ran into another woman pushing HER stroller in my neighborhood and we stopped to say hello, introduce ourselves and chat. We wound up talking for about 15 minutes or so, and her little angel was only a couple weeks older than mine! To make a long story short, we made plans to meet up and go walking TOGETHER the next morning. That moment forever changed my life and I will never forget it. FINALLY, I had someone in my life who was going through the same challenges as me, having the same feelings of hopelessness as me, and just trying to figure out the new life of being a mom just like I was! Ok, it never fails. The waterworks have begun. Whether she realizes it or not, this girl absolutely SAVED me from complete and total despair and depression. The gift of her friendship is something that I will regard as one of the most precious gifts I was ever given. I miss her and think of her every day.

My last and final association of friends are also “Mom-friends” but they are more than that. These are my “Mom-friends” who are in my life on a daily basis and who are constantly putting up with my crap. These are those friends where NOTHING is off limits and there are just no-holds barred. These are my friends who truly “get it.” These are my friends for life…my “Lifers.” These women do not judge me and I do not judge them. There is just a general understanding that, “SH*# happens,” and sometimes this is quite literal. One of my “Lifers” became a “Lifer” within about a month or so of first meeting her. I remember the first time that I went over to her house for a play date. As I pushed my stroller up to her house, she was sticking her head out the front door and yelling at her dog. The poor little dog was in the front yard rolling around in her own turds. She was completely covered in poop when we arrived at the house. I know that my poor friend was completely mortified in this moment. I absolutely and honestly thought nothing of it, in fact I thought it was pretty humorous! I took my son out of the stroller, entered the house and sent him into the playroom to play with her little girl who was the same age. My friend was pregnant with her second child at this point, and she scooped up the poop-covered dog and put her in the sink in an attempt to clean her up. She realized that she was going to need the dog shampoo to complete this task. The dog shampoo was not under the sink, so she had to go upstairs to get it. I told her not to worry, that I would watch the dog to make sure she didn’t jump out of the sink while she ran up to get the shampoo. As soon as she went up the stairs, that little dog started trying to climb out of the sink. What did I do? I did what any good friend would’ve done. I went over, put my hands on the dog and held her down in the sink. Of course, now I was also covered in poop. May I reiterate that life as a Mom revolves around poop? Anyway, my friend came back downstairs, realized that I had her dog’s poo all over my hands, then realized that I was laughing about it and totally didn’t mind being covered in her dog’s poo. She looked at me and said, “Our friendship just went to a whole new level.” Not too long after that she had that second baby. The first time I went to see him, he threw up all over me. Yep, she’s a “Lifer” alright. We’ll be laughing about that dog poo long after our kids have gotten married. If things go according to plan, we’re hoping to be in-laws someday.

For my college bud who has now moved into the “Lifer” category, I always knew she’d be a “Lifer”, but I knew it even more-so after she had her first child a few weeks ago. Now she’s a mommy too. Now she “gets it!” After reading my early post on “The Evolution of Poop”, she immediately emailed me to tell me how much she loved it, and also to tell me that her newborn had a bout of projectile diarrhea all over her bedroom floor at around 3am the night before. She also mentioned that she and her hubby were too tired to clean it up and just put a diaper on her and went to bed. I couldn’t believe she admitted it. Now THAT’s a friend! Hopefully she will still want to be a “Lifer” now that I’ve told her daughter’s story on the internet.

The Mommyologist’s Last Word: “Hold onto your “Lifers” Mommies! There aren’t many people out there who will truly put up with your CRAP!”