Have you ever had an “almost friend”? Almost-friends come in many forms. There’s the pleasant acquaintance that you’d really like to get to know better but perhaps your schedules don’t mesh, so it’s just easier to be . . . acquainted.
Then there’s the vacation-almost-friend. It was there, it was real, it was over. This can apply to other friendly relationships too. Promised you’d write, promised you call – why ruin a fun thing by discovering they’re not as interesting as you thought?
Then there’s the kind I experienced recently. The kind of tragic almost-friend. Things are be-bopping along swimmingly when something unexpected crops up (psst . . . it’s called real life) You’d probably spent time with this person, shared some laughs, discussed important matters, you might have even thought you had a sure thing, but life crops up – raw and mean and totally out of the blue. It’s quickly and firmly settled, your bosom buddy turns into an almost-friend. I really hate this. I hate the “last look”. One of my favorite lines from Elizabethtown - “Because we have a moment here, let me tell you that I have recently become a secret connoisseur of ‘last looks’. You know the way people look at you when they believe it’s for the last time? I’ve started collecting these looks.”
Yup, I got a last look. A look that said, “Well we could have been great friends but this whole screwed up life thing of yours really doesn’t jibe well with my perfect one.” Sorry, I don’t mean to sound all “grouchy” as Junie B. Jones would say. Because on the other side of that is the real friend – the one who looks at you in the midst of a freak-out, a disaster, or a trip to Target with you and your unruly child and says, “Cool, she’s not perfect either.”
