besties

Oops, I blinked and I missed it. I just found out that Sunday, June 8th was Best Friends Day, which completed passed me by. I don’t know how. I didn’t even pause to pay homage to my own Besties on that day. Shame on me!

That morning one of my closest friends called while waiting for her flight at an airport terminal in Tampa. I’m sure Linda didn’t know it was Best Friends Day but she seizes every moment to catch up with me when she is waiting----sometimes in the strangest of places.

This typically includes doctors’ waiting rooms; hair salons during the trip between the sink and the stylist’s chair; dentist chairs while she is waiting for the doc after her cleaning; ladies room while she is tinkling; nail shops while she is waiting for her nails to dry; and long post office lines---to name just a few. Only a few short years ago it seems, she would call while she was waiting for her now-grown son to get dismissed from school and run to her car.

Well my promised day for me, Best Friends Day, eluded me like so many others: laundry, dishes, chores and then a brunch/fund-raiser for a local NAMI group. But it wasn’t all work and no play. I met some lovely work-friends at the event. Afterwards I came home to write one of the remaining chapters of a book on schizophrenia that I’m finishing up finally (more to come in a future post). At least it wasn’t another day of writer’s isolation which has come to characterize so many recent nights and weekends as I wait to wrap things up and get back into friendship.

They say that all good things come to those who wait. Check in with me again on August 3rd, Friendship Day. Can you please remind me if I forget?

When she was released from jail last June, Paris Hilton seemed to be looking for redemption---some way to give back to society---to help down-and-out women. But first things first: She is on the prowl for a new bestie. But maybe the two are linked.

 

Why the sudden friendship deficit? I can only speculate. A few of her well-known friends wound up in the clink in recent months and the Paris-Nicole relationship just isn’t what it used to be. Nicole has a two-month-old baby (and when one woman has a child and another doesn’t, it can alter even the best of normal friendships).

 

So the socialite-heiress-celebrity-newsmaker announced plans to star in a new 10-episode reality show on MTV, tentatively titled “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF.” The series is scheduled to begin production in May and planned to air during the fourth quarter of the year.

 

The premise: Paris will be selecting from among 20 potential BFFs (best friends forever) to find the fairest of them all (male or female), a bestie. According to Broadcasting and Cable, the bestie will “accompany her to A-list parties and personal business functions.”

 

Paris has explained that she can "teach the secrets of celebrity living — how to turn your enchanted life into a multimillion dollar brand, how to manage public feuds and always rise above, how to survive scandal and then make it work for you, all the while wearing 6-inch heels."

 

An online voting site was launched on Thursday at ParisBFF.com to solicit BFF hopefuls who will vie to join a group of 20 from which she will choose the fairest of them all.

 

To be eligible, wannabes are asked to submit a 90-second video that answers the following:

• What is the wildest thing you've ever done?
• If you became a celebrity, what secret would you be most fearful of having exposed?
• Why do you think you would fit in with the socialite circle?

 

Well I know one woman who might fit the bill and could sure use a best friend right now. Paris, you might want to give Ashley Alexandra Dupre a casting call.

Picture of Paris Hilton courtesy of K Pinguino under Creative Commons.  

If you ask two friends to describe how they became Besties, they usually say “we just clicked.”

That certainly is the case for Sal Henley Kibler and Mari Maseng Will, now both 53 years old, who first met at freshman orientation at the University of South Carolina. They pledged the same sorority and roomed together from their sophomore year on. “Maybe we were drawn to each other because we were the tallest women we had ever met,” jokes Mari. (At 6 feet she is just two inches taller than Sal.)

Turning an instant friendship into a lasting one requires time and effort but Sal and Mari have been able to maintain their relationship over the years by playing the game: golf. “We are God parents for each other’s children and seem to go through life’s twists and turns pretty much at the same time,” says Sal. Despite living states apart, their shared love of golf has helped them stay connected and remain close to one another.

“Our playing ebbs and flows with the time available since we are both trying to work, raise children and spend time with our husbands,” says Mari, who lives in Washington, D.C.

“We started playing golf about five years ago, once our kids got to be tweens and our careers were a little more established,” says Sal. Now the women try to play together at least once every six weeks, although it doesn’t always work out that way.

Like most women, they find it hard to justify time away for themselves. “We are getting better at that, though,” says Mari. “Our common interest erases the miles, and the years,” she says. “We laugh all the way across the course and it feels good. Women need their community of women friends to lean on. Golf provides opportunities to be together and hours of time to talk and laugh – in the outdoors and at beautiful settings. The game is all about the golfer and the course--- at that moment. There’s no room in your head for work pressures, science projects and what you’re going to do about dinner.”

Both women place a high priority on their friendship. They realize that no matter how hard they try---their work, children and families are never going to be perfect---so they might as well have fun. “Our colleagues, our children and our husbands seem to be happier when we are,” says Mari.

Sal Henley Kibler is publisher of momseasychair.com, an online magazine and community for women who also happen to be moms. She has held executive positions at several leading advertising agencies in Atlanta, and ran her own marketing consulting firm. Mari Maseng Will was a speech writer for President Reagan and served as his last communications director. She ran corporate relations for a worldwide consumer products company, and served as press secretary and then communications director in Bob Dole’s Presidential campaigns. Today she runs her own business consulting with major corporations, industry groups and non-profit organizations.

What will they think of next?

Want your besties to know where you are---wherever you are? Interested in their whereabouts? Then download Whereboutz, a new free Facebook application by Telenav that adds legs to the Status Update that appears on your profile. It can also be downloaded to 100 different cell phones.

Whereboutz lets you type in your location on an interactive map and add a note telling what you’re up to. When your friend does the same, you can use a yellow-pages-type search function to help you figure out where to meet. If you can’t meet up in person, at least you can ruefully visualize the distance between you on a map and better understand how geography creates miles between even the best of friends..

Oh, one more opportunity for connecting: If you’re already on Facebook, you know about “pokes”---well, if your friend hasn‘t updated her status in a while, there is a gentle Whereboutz “nudge” function to remind her.

For more information and to sign up, visit www.whereboutz.com.

No surprise. People on Facebook are consumed with friendship, BFFs, besties, and like to rank their friends. Hmmm….wonder how I got there?

An article in this week’s Australian PC World ranks Top Friends (developed by Slide) as the top Facebook application. Among 46 million active users on the site, more than 3 million have signed on to Top Friends as daily users. (That’s about 15% of the total Facebook user base)...

Another reason why the fantasy, Best Friends Forever (BFF), isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: When the all-consuming, all-fulfilling, one-and-only female friendship in your life fizzles out or blows up, you’re left in excruciating pain. And there’s no one to talk to or share your misery with. Generally, you would call your Bestie---but she’s the problem!

If you ever have unexpectedly lost a friendship that you were sure would last forever, you must realize that it is always a good idea to encircle yourself with more than just one best friend...