The Differences Between Friends

My good friend and I are so alike in many ways:

We hail from the same state. I moved here 26 years ago (WOW!) when I attended college, she moved here more recently after her husband transferred jobs. That home state connection is a strong bond between us, in that both of us travel back throughout the year to visit family and friends. We often travel on the same dates, and once we were on the same highway returning home, a mere 30 exits apart.

We both have FOOD ISSUES! She and I have tried any number of hair-brained schemes to lose weight and get in shape ("back on track" are our three most repeated and most HATED words!) We've done Weight Watchers together, worked out together, done fitness challenges together... When we are good, we share low-point recipes and suggestions. When we are bad we regale each other with our food binges, each of us cheering the other on when we've hit a new high (or low as the case may be)in the amount of peanut butter M&Ms consumed.

We both enjoy movies! We love nothing better than sneaking off together in the middle of the school day and watching some awesome (or awesomely BAD!)movie. We'll both smuggle in our ziploc bag of popcorn and our contraband soda (and if we're are OFF TRACK then a large bag of twizzlers or the aforementioned peanut butter M&Ms). With some friends I feel obliged to sit silently through the movie, but this friend and I feel completely free to rank on any and every impossible plot twist in whatever we are seeing!

Case in point...We saw "Vantage Point" yesterday. Not to give anything away (SPOILER ALERT!) but these terrorists spend the entire movie killing about fifty billion people in a most UNBELIEVABLE plot. At the end of the movie, they are racing to get away through the streets of Spain in an ambulance and they suddenly see a little girl standing in the middle of the road. The evil she-terrorist shrieks "Watch Out!" while the evil male terrorist cuts the steering wheel sharply, missing the little girl and swerving wildly out of control! I yelled, "Oh right, let's not hit the little girl!" while my friend yelled "Yeah, we've only just killed everyone else in this movie already!"

You can't beat that kind of kismet.

But while we have so many similarities, it is our differences that I often dwell on.

I have always cared too much about what people think. This self-consciousness has impacted nearly every aspect of my life. I'm not complaining, I've managed to adopt a more "who cares" attitude as I advance through middle age.

My friend, on the other hand, will not hesitate to speak her mind regardless of the situation. She recently told me that she took a gas station attendant to task when he was speaking on his cell phone while pumping her gas. While I probably would have just crossed my fingers and hoped for no explosion, she pointedly told him to end his call. WHen he didn't she threatened to start the car and drive off with THE PUMP STILL ATTACHED! When he protested that she had a better chance of being hit by lightning than by her car catching fire from a spark at the pump, her reply was "If I want to take that chance I will, but I'm not going to let you take a chance with MY life!"

She is a fierce advocate for her children. She will not back down from any teacher, counselor, karate instructor or other mother when it concerns the health, safety and well being of her children. I'd like to think that I would act accordingly with my children in similar situations, but I know myself too well. I act as an advocate for my children too, but that little voice in the back of my mind is always there, warning me not to be a nudge because otherwise people won't like me!

My friend also has a kindness and a generousness of spirit which I completely admire (even if I can't understand it!) If I'm driving and someone gives me the finger, I fantasize about running them off the road and making a break for it. My friend blows them a kiss instead.

Recently, while grocery shopping she realized she had forgotten her store discount card and asked the clerk (an elderly man) if he had a card at his register he could run through instead (most of the clerks do!). He flat out refused and while they went back and forth for a time, she ended up not getting her sale prices When she told me this story, I was OUTRAGED! I railed about how awful the clerk was, how inconsiderate, what an evil, petty person! My friend just sighed and said ,"Who knows, maybe he just found out some awful news about his wife." (I would have been plotting my revenge with a grocery cart after store hours.)

In spinning the other day, she was too late to get a spot in the class. I was disappointed, but my disappointment quickly turned to anger, then rage when the bike next to me, which had a water bottle and a sweatshirt draped on it, remained EMPTY for the first 15 minutes of class. (Someone else who had been shut out poked her head into the room and I told her to take the bike, dammit!) When I told my friend about this afterwards, again, I worked myself up into a frenzy, damning whomever would be so thoughtless to claim that bike for themselves and not use it!(or for someone else...I'm still not convinced it wasn't someone in class claiming a bike for a friend...) My friend turned to me and said, "Maybe something came up that prevented them from spinning. You don't know."

I guess you would call this kind of attitude optimism, but I always lump that word in with the whole glass half empty/half full debate. My friend is always willing to give the other person the benefit of the doubt. She assumes the best about total strangers instead of the worst. To my knowledge, the only two people she has EVER expressed a negative opinion about are Oprah Winfrey (she HATES that Oprah is on the cover of her own magazine EVERY month) and Rachel Ray ("...overexposed, annoying voice and her hands are as big as catcher's mitts...").

I wish I could be more like my friend. I told her this and to my surprise she launched into all the ways that she admires me where she falls short (knowledge of current events, computer savvy, and my ability to embrace things head on).

This made me realize that it is our similarities that initially bring us together, but it is our differences that make our friendships interesting.

Here's to ALL of my incredible friends!