bff

when you're a kid, it's easy. when you're really young, you just need a pusher for the swings, or a counterbalance on the see-saw. somebody with whom to trade lunches. "i'll be your best friend if *fill in the blank*". all day long, you've got potential pals climbing out of the sandbox and dangling from the monkey bars. what kid really has a concept of forever anyway? but my point here is the vast pool from which to choose. alliances wax and wane, but if tomorrow it all blows up into "I HATE YOU!!" -- it won't matter because you can just sit at a different lunch table and make mean "i'm-so-over-you" faces at her.

you get bigger and you're no longer in line for the slide, but you've still got an enormous circle from which to choose, and gradually you're divvied up into common interests like advanced placement classes or vo-tech studies, then after-hours by either sports or more studious pursuits. even just hanging out in the woods getting high. however you pass time, you're surrounded all day by friends and the possibilty of new ones.

you never run out of things to talk about, and YOU TELL THEM EVERYTHING. there isn't enough time in the day to discuss it all. hours on the phone, yakkity-yakkity during breaks, notes passed, letters sent. an endless stream of sharing.

you graduate college, and if like me, you're in a vibrant urban area, chances are a fair number of your friends will stick around while they sort out either careers or relationships. things start to shift. someone takes a job in l.a., and another follows her boyfriend to chicago. your circle starts to get holes in it. some are better than others at keeping in touch, and you figure a few calls/notes a year from your end will give you somebody to visit when you go to san francisco. thailand or tibet. or finland.

jobs are as demanding as we allow them to be, but when you're a professional newbie, lots of folks around you are in the same boat, so you've got fall-back for drinks after work and weekends on the beach.

soon people start pairing off and signing on, and you find yourself in one hilarious bridesmaid outfit after another and thanking whatever irishman (it had to have been a paddy) came up with the concept of open-bar at these hoo-has. the back of your closet is a crinkly riot of noisy pastels and you've got more dyed shoes than you care to count. although that sassy red pair flung from the catwalk at 3:00 a.m., which tinted the pool deep crimson (thus closing it for 12 hours), obviously never made it home.

you've always got a boyfriend, so they don't feel weird including you at parties and dinners. you still see the ones you care to see. you don't always like how they morph into "spouse-tron", so choose to drift away, rather than judge. you begin to notice that at more and more weddings, the singles' tables grow fewer and fewer.

then the march of the spawn begins. you throw showers, you buy gifts, you coo at the infant(s), but it's not long before you have little in common. their life now is diaper changes and midnight feeds, and you can only feign interest in so many gurgling bundles before it grows thin. they don't have time to read a paper or see a flick and for them it's more rewarding anyway to share with other new parents. the real divide begins.

you're busy with life, kids are of no concern, but you occasionally feel the pang of wishing you could call *him* or *her* and share something funny or challenging, but know he/she will be otherwise occupied. you have no desire to waste long-distance money on the obligatory phone conversation with the two-year-old. so the call goes unmade. sometimes, it's that you're crying, and want to call, but you don't want to burden a busy dad/mom with all that. what's your sadness compared to a baby? so you sob in the dark, and that's that. you've got fewer and fewer places to distribute your heart.

a book called "bowling alone", issued a few years back, is getting some interest again. who knows why the cultural zeitgeist has burped it back up, but it chronicles the growing personal isolation of americans. i-m, cellphones and texting were all in their infancy back then, and have only exploded since the book's release. who had heard of blogging (woo-hoo, look at me) in 2000? yet membership in things like local bowling leagues and dart clubs is way down. so, while we remain ephemerally connected, we have fewer and fewer real friends. think about it. right now. whom could you call and know they'd drop whatever they were doing to meet for coffee or a pint? a recent study found that most americans feel they have "one true friend" in whom they could confide anything. one. true. friend. loaded words, together and separate.

in a perfect world, wouldn't your one true friend be your significant other?

what then do you do when a tornado of unimagined power whisks him away? it blows the roof off the house you shared, demolishes every stick of your emotional furniture and explodes every cushion of security. all you have left are shattered pointy shards and the sound of featherdown drifting into a pile at your feet.

how do you rearrange both your personal inner significance, and your concept of his? indeed, when your confidante can't or won't hear you over the wind, it's a cold realization you never bought bowling shoes.