Where to find a best friend?

Couples are often asked to recount the story of how they met. The improbability of two people meeting by mere chance and finding love is the stuff of legend and cinematic fodder. Every couple has a story, even those who met via cyber matchmaking services.

My funny husband and I have a story, both sets of our parents had stories, and we have friends with stories ranging from romantic to practical. Even our pets have stories about how they came into our hearts. There are other important, life-shaping relationships with remarkable stories that too often go untold. Those are the stories of best friends.

Blessed with close, lifelong friendships, I hadn’t examined how those relationships began all that closely or celebrated the fate-driven events that brought us together until my niece asked. Almost 12-years-old Kate, formerly known as Katelyn, is getting ready for middle school and has been staying with her favorite aunt for the last couple of weeks of carefree summer.

We were sitting in the pool watching my dogs chase each other around the hammock when she told me her main focus in middle school was to find a best friend.

“I have had some really good friends and some really fun ones. I have long distance ones like Darby as a best friend and Gia who lives in California. I need a best friend who lives close to me who I can see all the time. How did you find your best friend,” she asked me.

I needed a minute to imagine that my bright, beautiful niece has had any trouble finding a best friend or that she has ever had to spend a minute feeling lonely. I asked her what she was looking for in a best friend.

“Someone who will always tell me the truth and who will be loyal. Someone who listens, someone who is open minded and loves animals like I do. I want to be that kind of a friend. I want someone who doesn’t keep secrets and who will defend me. I would defend them,” she said.

Kate’s plan is to first be a friend to the person whose locker is next to hers in her new school and I agreed that would be a good place to start. I met my long-time friend, a new girl, on the playground the first day of fourth grade. Our grandmothers were friends and I had been told to look out for her and to be friendly because she would need a friend. We bonded quickly over our shared ineptitude at four square and we have been best friends since.

I have met other best friends by chance and by shared circumstance, one in an airport waiting to fly to Spain, another in a journalism class, one as a roommate with a shared love of practical jokes, one a disastrous blind date, a couple through work, and a few later on because of our kids. Maybe that is how best friends are supposed to meet. I’d like to write a singles ad for Kate who has grown past being a little girl named Katelyn in hopes for a more mature, lasting friendship for when calling on her Aunt Lori becomes less than cool.

The ad reads: “Extraordinary girl seeks same for long conversations about nothing with a lot of giggling. Must love books, dancing, Dr. Who reruns, and white cheddar popcorn and be as challenged by the locks on these lockers.”

I hope she won’t have to leave it posted on her locker for long. Middle school can be a tough place, even for extraordinary best friends.

Lori Law can be reached at lori@columbus.rr.com.