Thursday, November 13, 2008

Thoughtful Thursday : Girls as best friends....

A group of girls as best friends for life, with no tiffs whatsoever and staying in touch very regularly. True? Yeah as true as the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. What is so different in women being best buddies? The answer lies in inherent traits and societal mores! No, I didn't pick that up from a 'Chicken Soup for the Bored Soul' book. But, yes, thick friendships among men and those among women are different.

The pleasant memories are plenty. Late night talks about anything and everything. A breed with the uncanny ability to appreciate chick flicks and see the art within those movies. Blasting the 'male dominated world', while at the same time giving a nonchalant shrug, saying 'who cares, since girls just wanna have fun'. The never ending shopping binges. Only a lady can understand another's relentless poring over a choice between two nearly identical shades of lip color. D-uh! Men are almost always color blind. They can't tell a red from a green - a weakness that shows up in their driving skills!!!

But being female is not always so hunky dory. As kids, girls bicker and fight over the pettiest of things. 'Whose dress is prettier', or 'Who is taller, fairer, cuter'. These bickerings graduate to higher levels as the girls grow, with the result being full fledged cat fights! Even among seeming 'best friends'. Jealousy and a certain degree of perennial comparison between one another, doesn't allow two women to be as open with one another as two men would be with each other. A dash of over-sensitivity just seems to add more fuel to a fire. So, when she doesn't invite me to her pet dog's christening ceremony, I get angry and refuse to talk to her for the rest of my life. More often than not, I really don't end up talking to her. But reason dawns upon me so much later! And by then maybe she is already married and has a litter of her own!

And one day, coffee in hand on a rainy day, at our respective homes, when the kids are asleep, the last work email has been checked and answered, dinner is finished and the dishes done, gazing out of the window, looking at nothing, the old memories would come flooding back, and one would long for those days of yapping, pajama parties, and good old girlie banter. But by then our close-knit small world has literally been exploded sending the shards in different directions. And all we have are the memories and the hated phrase - 'if only'....

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