BFFing

Recently, one of my best friends was visiting, and it always reminds me of the really important things in life.

I met this friend 11 years ago, when we were both bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and on one of our first training courses in the military.

I pretty much instantly disliked him.

He poked fun at me, gave me a hard time, and had this uncanny ability to always be around when something was going wrong so that he could quietly chirp, "Well, this isn't going the way you thought it would, now is it?"

He was one of those tall, slender assholes that could effortlessly run long distances. This was made even more annoying by the fact that he was also a smoker, but that never seemed to deter his abilities. I can run, but keeping up with a pack of guys, an incredulous amount of whom were also tall, slender jerks that probably went for casual jogs with the Kenyan cross-country team or something, was not the easiest for me. I'm pretty sure that my friend/nemesis at the time would purposely drop back to run beside me so that he could say things like, "Oh, looks like someone is looking a little tired this morning. You're not going to fall out, are you, Bell?" And then he'd trot right back up to the front. I don't really remember how often this happened, but I remember it happened at least once, and my reaction was always to utter his name in the same way and tone as Jerry Seinfeld would say, "Newman."

Turns out, we were just best friends waiting to happen, and I suspect he had always known this, and was maybe the reason for all the chirping. And now over a decade later our friendship is held strongly together by all the good-natured teasing and jokes. So much so that when I meet new people, if they're ballsy enough to poke some fun at me, I pretty much instantly know we'll get along just swimmingly.

What I've always so greatly appreciated in all the years we've been friends, even when there have been long periods of time without visits, is that we've always been able to pick right back up as if we had seen each other yesterday. I think the best friendships are like that, because there is a deep understanding of each other, and I think when you get right down to it, you are same kind of weird.

My friend has the rare ability to make me really laugh out loud, and the little games that we play out of self-amusement make me the kind of happy I remember feeling as a kid when I would set up prehistoric worlds across the lawn with my plastic dinosaurs and play with my friends. My best friend growing up was also a boy, and he had all the same qualities: effortlessly deadpan funny, made me erupt into fits of uncontrolled giggles, and just so fucking smart in the way that intelligence of that kind sometimes gets them into trouble.

It's time spent with these kinds of people; the people that make you feel understood, and make you laugh, and make you feel the kind of happiness that doesn't come along every day, that I think you understand what all this time is really for.

And obviously, that time is for quoting Vin Diesel movies. 

Natalie Bell is excited for when the 6th Fast & Furious movie comes out. She's betting there'll be some pretty decent one-liners.