A poll without being a poll.
I’d hazard to assume everybody has, or has had, a best friend. Unless you’re very much an outlier and have never had any friend at all, I suppose. But even if you never consciously thought about someone as being your best friend, of the friends you’ve had, there’s been one that was the best. And of the friends you have now, one of them is the best.
But – do you think one of your friends considers you to be their best friend?
It’s possible that in my childhood, growing up in Roseville, MN, on Skillman Ave between Snelling and Fairview, one of those other kids may have considered me to be their best friend at some point. Maybe Danny R. for a time. Possibly Dave W. Perhaps Bob Z. But if any of them ever did consider me their best friend – even briefly – the most likely was Rao T. and I think for that brief period, I considered him my best friend as well.
I wouldn’t have understood it at the time, but in hindsight, Rao’s parents considered me to be a bad influence (or at least my mother was), and he was forbidden to play with me. You see, my right wing christo-fascist mother was scared shitless about a little brown Hindu boy leading her good little christian son astray. So she proselytized Rao into submission. Then when Rao told his parents that he had accepted Jesus, it was all over. We never hung out again, and rightfully so.
But after then, I can’t think of anyone else throughout some six decades who I believe would’ve said that I was their best friend.
There’s been some folks along the way who I considered for a time to be my best friend. Norm J. (in H.S.), Dave (my 1st Best Man), Wade, Keith (my 2nd Best Man), Zeke, Katrina, Chuck, Robert, Matt… but in none of those instances have I ever thought it likely that they considered me to be their best friend. And honestly, that doesn’t bother me. But I wonder, from an objective psychological perspective, would that bother most people? Oh, most of my best friends have been co-workers. One of them was someone who took the same express bus downtown to work every morning for a couple years.
So here comes the poll that’s not a poll…
Think of your best friend. Are you confident they also consider you their best friend? (I suspect this is quite common, but maybe not the largest group.)
Do you think there’s someone who considers you their best friend, but they are not yours?
Do you think your best friend has some other friend that’s their best? (This and the previous one are not mutually exclusive.)
Do you know you’re not anyone’s best friend? If so, are you fine with it, or does it bother you?
