A good friend will stand next to you at your wedding. A best friend will stand just behind and to the right of you because she insists it will make you look 3-D.
A good friend could recite your Starbucks order in her sleep. A best friend does recite your Starbucks order in her sleep, every night, no matter what, because it’s the only way to keep the bad faces away.
A good friend will come over to your house and ask if you have any snacks. A best friend will walk straight to your refrigerator and rub raw chicken underneath the orange juice caps.
A good friend knows your favorite wine. A best friend will fill your bathtub to the brim with it and be waiting in the dark for you to get home. She’ll shove a cheese cube in your mouth to stifle your screams, and will ignore your protests that the wine is staining your skin, because she knows better than anyone how much you’ve been needing a good Merlot skin stain.
A good friend knows that you secretly love The Notebook. A best friend tells you you’re going to reenact all of the best scenes, and then leaves you dangling on a Ferris Wheel.
A good friend brings you chocolate and Midol when you’re on your period. A best friend replaces all of your glassware with Diva cups and puts a virus on your computer that makes it autoplay videos of soldiers returning home and reuniting with their dogs.
A good friend will call your parents by their first names. A best friend will call them mom and dad, but in a way that makes your dad blush and your mom look away. “Did you ever notice that mom and dad are kind of old?” your best friend will ask, and then toss a copy of The Face on the Milk Carton on the counter on her way out.
A good friend will take notes for you when you’re out sick from school. A best friend will text and say “I’m sorry you had a temperature of 101.6,” which is weird, because you don’t remember telling her that. When you’re at her house the next week, you’ll notice that the doll she always keeps on top of her dresser is sitting on the heat vent.
A good friend will hug and comfort you when your boyfriend leaves. A best friend will already have pieces of his hair and skin flakes she’s been collecting all along just in case. A best friend won’t open the door when you knock, asking what she’s doing with your boyfriend’s sweatshirt. A best friend will be very quiet, and then say “science” as if that explains everything, and it will.
A good friend will lie to you about your bad haircut to make you feel better. A best friend will whisper something in the barber’s ear while he’s working on you, and his eyes will get wide, and he’ll start cutting faster, and faster, then so fast it’s blurry like a cartoon, while your best friend leans on the reception counter, sucking a lollipop.
A good friend will pretend to like the dumb TV shows you like. A best friend will pantomime an entire episode of How I Met Your Mother in your dark living room while you watch. “Can’t we just actually watch–” you’ll start to ask, but a best friend will throw your television to the ground and stomp on it. Then she’ll pull her foot out of the shattered screen, blink to compose herself, and begin again, ignoring the blood starting to seep through her jeans.
A good friend will bail you out of jail. A best friend will be in the next cell, whispering, “Say you were with me on the night of the 15th. Say it.” When you start to respond, a best friend will scream and rip her ponytail out. She’ll keep screaming and waving the ponytail stump around, even as the guards drag her away. Years later, you’ll swear you can hear that scream sampled in a Kanye song, but that can’t be. The next time you play the album, the scream sounds louder than everything else, and the time after that, the whole album is just that song, sixteen times in a row, and every time you hit the “stop” button the song restarts.
A good friend offers to help you move. A best friend is behind you in the bathroom mirror when you look up from washing your face.
A good friend always returns books you lent them. A best friend always seems to be reading from the same page in the same book, sitting in the same chair, whenever you come over. When you ask if they’re going to give your book back, they’ll say, “What book” and all of the sudden, you can’t remember the name. You can’t remember the names of any of your books. Come to think of it, you can’t remember who your parents are. You’re starting to panic, but your best friend will say, “Shh, shh” and lead you into the kitchen, where a bowl of alphabet soup is sitting on the counter, somehow already hot.
This + mallory’s “things I have mistaken for friendship” = do i actually have any friends
Wow, that’s some heavy Welcome to Night Vale sh*t right there.
Yes, the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home is your best friend, Chad.
I only discovered WTNV a few months ago and have already listened to every ep at least twice and none of my friends like it and I’m not on Tumblr so the fact that someone else even mentions it makes me all giddy because I’m not actually alone!
I’m okay and totally normal, really.
This is great, but it also reminded me that the Face on the Milk Cartoon series played a crucial role in my sexual awakening, and I’m sure I really needed to dwell on that today.
No, wait, I did. A+, would read and shudder throughout again.
At least it wasn’t Flowers in the Attic!
I mean, correct me if I’m wrong here, but she–Janie, I think that’s the name of the protagonist–had a boyfriend named Reed, and they got to second base together in a pile of leaves, and I found that SO INTERESTING as a youth, but in a very confusing way (kind of like MTV’s The Grind and the Billy/Trini dynamic on the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers; both these examples explain a lot).
And she wore a pink sweater even though she’s a redhead!
yep. that’s the scene. my 10 year old self also found that very compelling.
Ah yes, the leaf pile. Good times. And I think his name was Reese.
YESSSSSSS I totally remember that. REESE! What a dreamboat.
His name was Reeve. I am not even ashamed of myself for knowing this.
I feel like you must be besties with David Lynch. Which, were it an option, I would totally take.
I must take a moment to recommend the documentary “My Beautiful Broken Brain” on Netflix. It’s amazing. There is a David Lynch connection, I promise.
I live with my best friend and some of these made me want to start locking my bedroom door at night. Not because I think it’ll save me, just to feel in control.
And some of these filled me with a weird desire to go rewatch Practical Magic.
As a child, I wanted to be Nicole Kidman’s character in that movie, and then the aunts when I grew up more than I wanted anything I have ever wanted.
Always rewatch Practical Magic.
By this metric, the Toast is best friends with Pinterest Platitudes. I love it.
Apparently I am more disturbed by raw chicken than by anything else best friends might get up to. I am glad to know this about myself.
I once worked with a chef who claimed that North Americans were “too uptight” about raw chicken, and would gleefully not use a different cutting board to prep it, just straight on the line then wipe it with his cloth with which he was also wiping plates, no handwashing between that and the next task, no knife washing, nothing. I started eating only soup on the shifts he was working (soup guy was a different guy and they did not share line space).
This was also the same chef who propositioned a 17 y.o. busser with “yo, my wife is out of town…” Never have I experienced better schadenfreude than when his marriage fell apart and then his restaurant failed.
oh
my
god
……. North Americans are uptight about raw chicken because our supplies of raw chicken are not great. The same way we’re uptight about keeping our eggs in the fridge because we WASH THE SHELLS SO THEY NEED TO BE REFRIGERATED
OH MY GOD
ASK; FJL GJK;W OTUOIIIYY8O[IGH;SDFOHnhE
wait, what is the connection between egg-washing and eggs requiring refrigeration?
Eggs have a natural coating that helps keep the bacteria/viruses out. We, in NA, wash it off, because what is worse than acknowledging that your egg came from *gasp* a farm?
Short version, from memory- eggs, directly from the chicken, can be kept at room temp safely, but since they are, y’know, from nature, sometimes they have dirt on them (also chicken shit.). Europe, among other places, generally keeps them like this, and so Europeans often just… have their eggs on the counter.
In the US, we powerwash the shit out of eggs, which takes the stuff off them, but removes the natural coating or whatever helps keep the egg shells mostly impermeable, so they need to be fridged.
it’s not super obvious to me which one is better, there are both pros and cons, but the big thing is that because the supply chains are very DIFFERENT and the process creates a DIFFERENT PRODUCT, you need to treat the products differently, and that’s not because Americans are uptight about egg storage, it’s because it’s a DIFFERENT THING
SHAMELESS SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT but my friend recently wrote a book that addresses this, along with many other interesting aspects of the egg industry! The US uses washing to prevent salmonella; Europe largely depends more on vaccination.
Wait, vaccinating… the chickens? Or the people? Are there salmonella vaccinations for chickens and/or people, because I legitimately have no idea and am now curious.
chickens!
Washing the egg gets rid of a protective coating on the shells and makes it easier for stuff to get in the shell, so you have to refrigerate them afterwards.
I may be misremembering but I feel like eggs right out of a chicken have some kind of protective coating that generally mass-produced eggs don’t have (because eggs fresh out of chickens also have, like, poop and feathers on them).
RAW CHICKEN IS A NIGHTMARISH HELLSCAPE OF DEATH
Especially when you throw away a package that once held said raw chicken. If there is one molecule of raw chicken still on that package, your entire home will smell like hell’s armpit for what seems like eons.
Wow. I love how often reading the comments on this site reaffirms my vegetarian lifestyle.
I’ve been a vegetarian for….gosh, over five years now…and I don’t miss my scenario ONE BIT.
My childhood near-death from salmonella (in the days when microwaves were new and nobody knew how to use them, and I was too small to check for pinkness in chicken) made me ‘uptight’ about it!
I am literally covering my mouth and rocking back and forth, that is so horrible, I have to crawl into a dark space and cry now.
I am so sorry 🙁
“my wife is out of town” = “my wife has terrible cramps and diarrhea from my devil-may-care attitude toward food preparation, can I call you again in two weeks when she is past her expiration date”
Actual LOL. This is so great on so many levels.
I was pretty sure my sister and I had invented the Face on the Milk Carton books (there were a couple, right?) because no one else we’ve mentioned them to has ever heard of them. Now I’m *certain* we didn’t invent them, our best friend did.
Yep! I read two of them–the second one was called Whatever Happened to Janie? Wiki indicates there were more after that but I don’t remember those.
There were at least 5, and I’m sure I read all of them, but all I remember is that Janie had a watch for every day of the week.
No, it was one with interchangeable rings that snapped on to the face. I had one of those too.
Lois Duncan! She had so many great ones. In the Face series though there were at least a couple. I remember one that focussed on the neighbour, Reece. I remember so much. I remember.
Sadly, Lois Duncan didn’t write the Face series – I probably would’ve read more than just the first one if she had because I inhaled her books when I was in high school.
Whoops, should have googled! Now that we’re talking about Lois Duncan… remember Daughters of Eve?
I remembered reading that one but I had to do a quick refresher on what actually happened. Ohhhh yes, that one.
Caroline B. Cooney wrote them! She used to have breakfast in the same luncheonette I did as a kid, and I always missed her, but one day we were there at the same time and I got to meet her! And she was wearing earrings made out of miniature books with real pages.
There were 4, as of 2003, when I was in 9th grade, although I found out a while back that there’s a 5th book now, but the excerpt I read of it online sounded terrible, which made me sad.
I INHALED all of the books when I was in middle school/high school. I still reread them once in a while, my copy of the first one is falling apart. As a kid with two families due to divorce/re-marriage with step-siblings/half-siblings on both sides, the second book’s story of Janie trying to navigate having two families and figuring out how to love both of them really resonated with me, I think. Also, I think it was the first time I really encountered a story where nobody had done anything *wrong,* per se, but there was still serious conflict, and that felt grown-up and complicated to me in a way that other books hadn’t.
Plus, as christy said upthread, the relationship between Reed and Janie was hawt, to 12yo me.
Good heavens, there were more? I think my encounter with the whole “she signed a contract binding her to the second family she never knew” bit in the second book was the first time I realized that publicized, literate fiction could have something that I would come to know as “gaping plot holes”.
I don’t remember there being a contract, although I might be wrong… She was a minor, though, so I don’t know how binding that would be, and at the end of the book, they all agree to let her go back to living with the Johnsons, so they clearly decided to disregard it, if there was a contract. I think it was just the court’s recommendation, that she should have a period of no-contact with her old family to provide space for her to bond with the new family in their place. Which, isn’t really *not* a plot hole, since it would make more sense for a recommendation to come from a psychologist of some sort, rather than a lawyer or judge, and it doesn’t seem like the type of recommendation that a reputable psychologist would actually make, but that didn’t occur to me at 12, so, you know.
I not only read those (or at least… the first one?), I did a BOOK REPORT on one, so I can also confirm they exist.
What are they about, for the uninitiated?
They’re about a girl who was kidnapped as a young girl who sees her own face on a milk carton and finds her original family.
I’m trying to figure out the logistics of pulling out a ponytail.
A best friend is clearly a witch, so I don’t think logistics really play into it.
oh god nope, that was the worst part. it’s just some horrible body horror thing. Like pulled hair out of her HEAD. And it’s still all bunched up in a ponytail.
excuse me I need to go get some fresh air and remember that warm sunshine is a thing.
This just makes sense. After all, my best friend is clearly my girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow. This is just other lovely aspects of our healthy relationship.
*whisper* Goop will always find you…
Have you seen the jewelry ad Gwyneth Paltrow is in right now, the one with the cassette tapes? It is completely bananas. I believe in The Toast’s Gwyneth more and more every day.
LINK
eta: okay i also googled it and it is as weird as you would expect (except i thought she would be wearing a cassette tape necklace for some reason)
Found it! https://youtu.be/BPOOpTqU4Mo
(came back to edit the html and I see you found it too) (but honestly what is going on)
What. Like, ok, I think I understand what is meant to be happening but it is so weird and horrifying and like what kind of person would arrange all of that and she thinks it’s charming and cute and not a little terrifying?
Also that necklace is ugly.
How long has the dude been gone??? He seems to be an astronaut, but an astronaut is gone for a long time if he spends one year in space, and “Alice” seems to have years and years and years worth of tapes. And in all that time she has never looked under her “favorite” t-shirt!
Right?! Like…..I can’t even the whole thing just makes me shudder.
I was ready to write pretty much this exact comment!
A Best Friend won’t just shove cheese in my mouth to stifle screams, but whenever I open my mouth.
Accurate.
The pantomimes seem better than actually having to watch How I Met Your Mother. Thanks best friend!
A good friend will hug and comfort you when your boyfriend leaves. A best friend will already have pieces of his hair and skin flakes she’s been collecting all along just in case. A best friend won’t open the door when you knock, asking what she’s doing with your boyfriend’s sweatshirt. A best friend will be very quiet, and then say “science” as if that explains everything, and it will.
BRB, gotta go call my friends and thank them for not actually liking me all that much.
I first encountered the movie SWF on TV about a third of the way in. I started watching thinking, oh this seems like a nice friend movie, then got increasingly horrified until I realized I was clutching the arms of the chair I was sitting in, changed the channel, and never found out how it ended.
THERE IS A DROP THE PUPPY FROM THE BALCONY SCENE, I hope you did not have to watch that.
That is sort of the way I encountered “Audition” I thought it was just a Japanese drama that was a little creepy until OMFG the ending. I had also made the wise decision to watch that by myself in the middle of the night.
OH GOD THAT MOVIE. I had to watch it for a feminist film theory class in college.
One of my high school friends and I went to see it the night before she left for college. Do not do this.
has anyone turned these into inspirational memes yet
You can replace “best friend” with “drunk friend” and it works perfectly
Looking forward to the “these are actually not very good behaviors from a friend” FB comments.
Sent this link to my best friend with the message “I loooove youuuuu” so we’ll see how that goes.
Doing the same, brb.
MALLORY.
…
Yes, I realize you’re not Mallory, but for this, you deserve to be screamed MALLORY at.
Literally the best compliment possible. I’m almost tearing up? I’m not joking?
Aaaaaw. It is, truly, a very well done piece, and now I’m slightly afraid of mirrors, again.
Do you think it’s better to sleep facing away from your bedroom mirror, to prove you aren’t scared of it/hide your fate from yourself so you sleep? Or better to face it head on, so you can spend the entire sleepless night waiting for the horrors to creep up on you between one eyeblink and the next?
If you have a mirror in your bedroom, you’re doomed no matter what you do. Accept your fate.
(I sometimes put a blanket over the hallway mirror because Movements From The Corner Of My Eyes. Especially after that one season of Sleepy Hollow.)
I really appreciated the juxtaposition of the writing with your very cheerful author photo.
JESUS CHRIST, RIANE
There.
I WAS GOING TO DO THE SAME THING. This deserves a hearty “JESUS CHRIST, MALLORY” and then it WASN’T Mallory so BEST JOB being eldritch af, Riane
I thought this too. I started reading it, thought MALLORY to myself, scrolled up to see if it was Mallory that wrote it, determined it was not, then concluded that MALLORY was still the appropriate response.
This is the stuff of nightmares :):):):):)
This is why I’m not here to make friends.
RIANE.
I started reading this thinking it was a fun takedown of those horrible “your best friend hides the body” type memes I see floating around FB (that annoy me because a best friend would intervene before you murdered someone) and then it took a hard left turn into horror-ville.
I’ll just rock myself in this corner for awhile. Maybe read that thread on gentle childhood books in the link round up again.
That was its original intent and then it just SPIRALED.
#funfact: My husband and I watch crime procedurals like nobody’s business, and occasionally I will turn to him and say, “The first thing you do when you murder someone is burn your clothes and take a shower. Then call (our friend who is a lawyer),” or “If I’m arrested, I’m calling you first and you get me a god damned lawyer stat,” or “If you’re arrested, call me and I’ll find you a lawyer and DO NOT TALK TO THE POLICE UNTIL SAID LAWYER ARRIVES.” And he nod and will say something like, “Definitely.”
And he is my best friend. So … I’m not sure what that says about us?
Obviously it says that you are practical, responsible planners. It’s important to keep these things in mind if ever one of you find someone that really, really needed to be stabbed.
The real life embodiment of the best friend appeared on captain awkward today: http://tinyurl.com/gqfhpga
“She desperately wants to be friends on social media, and I have firmly told her I don’t do that with work acquaintances. She wants us to get matching tattoos. I have said no with increasing hostility to each of these overtures and repeatedly said, “Emma, I understand that you would like us to be friends, but I have to maintain professional boundaries and I know you’ll understand that I can’t breach those roles,” to which she will inevitably sigh, giggle, and pet my arm while saying, “Soon! I’ll graduate from the cycle and we can HANG OUT!”
Ye GHODS. I am bad at setting boundaries but I could not deal with this level of whatthefuckery.
jesus christ Riane
“…videos of soldiers returning home and reuniting with their dogs.”
These undo me. Every time.
I have never been more glad I don’t have wine in my house than I am right now
Read this while hanging out on my best friend’s couch, feeling slightly awkward now…