SMH at all the BFFs

When we lived in Trenton, my Best Friend Melinda lived a few houses down, and a few more houses down from her lived my arch nemesis: Rhonda.  Capital letters for that title because in those days, we girls had one Best Friend.  It was an honorific saved for the girl to whom you told all your secrets, had over for sleepovers, wrote notes to, ran through the sprinkler with and, if you were lucky, who had a handsome older brother you could secretly crush on. Having a Best Friend was an important social marker – probably THE social marker of girlhood.

One sunny day it came to my attention that Melinda and Rhonda were playing Barbies in Rhonda’s driveway.  Horrified that my Best Friend might be making a new Best Friend, my six-year old brain told me that the best way to deal with this snub was to ride my bike up and down the street past the criminal in order to register my dissatisfaction with my Best Friend.  Of course, if Melinda saw me, she would rush over to play with me. 

Today, on social media, I have noticed a proliferation of BFF posts.  Several acquaintances of mine post pictures proudly proclaiming, “I love my BFF!”  Such pictures are posted more often than I had sleepovers back in Trenton.  Here’s the thing: in each picture – it’s a different person!  My acquaintance + a different person each time = BFF.  Having a BFF in every social media picture seems to be THE social marker of 2014. But, how is it that BFF has devolved to a moniker for everyone?

Best Friend was a title not to be taken lightly.  Add the “Forever” component to that title, and it seems even more exclusive to me. In any case, the idea that everyone in your Face Book photos or who follows you on Pinterest is a BFF has gotten stuck in my craw. These people are not all BFFs; some aren’t even friends.  Let’s face it: we all have “followers” whom we don’t know at all and “friends” whom we struggle to recall.

Let’s strive for precision in language.  Is everyone really your BFF?  Best Friend Forever seems so permanent, and we all know that life ebbs and flows; moves happen, things change, and a Melinda can turn into a Rhonda or the other way round faster than we think.  So, it seems to me that labeling everyone we have a margarita and a selfie with as BFF is a linguistic extreme.  Will the guy who cuts me off in traffic then become a WEF (Worst Enemy Forever)?  

I’d like to think I don’t have any arch nemeses anymore; however, I do have some dear friends.  They are all important to me despite the fact - or perhaps because of the fact -  that I don’t use the BFF label.  A deep breath and a true appreciation for the varied roles that all of our real friends, neighbors, colleagues, and acquaintances play in our lives is more valuable than the latest “Love my BFF” shots because at the end of the day, how we think about and label the people in our lives is actually pretty important.