I was at a four year old’s birthday party last weekend. Despite a few moments to treasure along the way, it might not surprise you to learn that this wasn’t my idea of an idyllic Saturday. We had someone in a Peppa Pig costume doing the Gangnam Style dance, and an enthusiastic clown terrorising my fiancé, while the adults cowered around the venue’s periphery, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. The food was chiefly chicken nuggets and potato chips, many footballs got stuck in many ceiling nets, and the soundtrack had an intermittent whine of grizzling toddlers. However, the most intriguing aspect of the whole afternoon (or at least the hour between arriving and hastily departing) was the discovery that, even at such an embryonic stage, these proto-people have developed strong and enduring friendships with each other, with an avowed enthusiasm for declaring someone to be their best friend.
Think about that for a minute. Four year old children, already in possession of BFFs and other Roald Dahl-esque acronyms, effortlessly being themselves in social situations and partying with their mates without a care in the world. As adults, we’d never aspire to such confidence (does he really like me? Is she just using me? Am I the ugly one to her pretty one when we go out on the pull?), but the next generation appears to have no such qualms. And this youthful belief in the robustness of friendship set me off on one of the thoughtful cogitations that regularly lead to a blog post.
When I was in my formative teenage years, I too was convinced that my contemporaneous friends would retain that status for life. I assumed, rather naively, that we’d stay in the same town, grow up and get married together (not to each other, I hasten to add), and attend weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs as an implacable group. Sadly, life intervened as it so often does, and people gradually moved away to far-flung locations like Brazil and London. A particularly close friend departed to a distant northern city to pursue a dream job, and although we kept in regular contact for a few years, geographic distance and the passage of time gradually eroded a formerly rock-solid friendship. By the time my auld acquaintance finally returned to his home turf, I’d also moved away in pursuit of a better life, and we haven’t spoken for over a decade now.
Losing touch with an old friend is a horrible business, especially when the reasons for it are lost in the mists of time. Maybe we grew apart, or perhaps we fell out without my even noticing, but we certainly haven’t been to any bar mitzvahs or civil partnerships together of late. However, should he be reading this, I would cordially invite him to get back in touch, thereby avoiding the fate that befalls so many people when they forget about the friends they thought they’d have forever. Rich indeed is the man whose mates can still remember him as a specky, spotty gimp back in third year, making girls recoil with every stride.
As for the four year old whose cautionary tale started this story, her party went remarkably smoothly, considering the potential for tantrums and upturned trestle tables, and her various friendships survived for another week. I really hope they do last for a lifetime, although I fear the odds are against it. Still, she won at pass-the-parcel and nobody complained even though it was clearly rigged, so she’s off to a good start.
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