Friends Sometimes when I watch "Friends" reruns (which is very often), I marvel that they often make fun of each other or say some kind of mean things. Like the prom episode when Monica says "The camera adds 10 pounds!" And Chandler's comeback is "How many cameras are ON you?" Surely you couldn't really say those things to your friends without them being mad at you. But wait. Maybe you can. There are few people in the world you can truly be yourself around. Anyone you live with is bound to see the good, the bad and the ugly. And no matter how much time passes without seeing each other (if you're real friends, of course), that just doesn't fade. Erin and I lived together our freshman and sophmore years of college, then I transferred to another college. We saw each other a couple times after that, then went for a long stretch without contact -- maybe about five years. I missed a whole long-term relationship she'd had. We'd talk here and there. I remember she called me at work once right after I'd started my current job, I think we exchanged Christmas cards that year. We may have talked a couple times, then lost track of each other again. A couple times now I've called her parents to get her phone number because it was unlisted or there were too many listed to just keep calling until I got the right one. In about the past year, we've gotten back in touch and have managed to visit each other a couple times now. We've always been able to pick up where we left off, which is I think one of the marks of a true friendship. You don't get too many of those in one lifetime. The subject of what we'll call The Long Silence came up, with a lot of accusatory, "But you never called me"s and some "I did so! And I sent you a Christmas card!"s. Five minutes after we'd given up trying to blame the other one for The Long Silence, the whole thing was forgotten, which reminds me of Friends. Then I thought, well they didn't all live together, so what makes them so special that the little jabs don't matter? (Besides the fact that they're not real.) Then I remembered that they had all lived together at some point. Phoebe and Monica were roommates (before the show started -- we're going to go ahead and pretend they're real, ok?), then Monica and Rachel, then Phoebe and Rachel for a little while. Chandler and Ross were college roommates, then Chandler and Joey lived together, then Joey and Rachel. And Monica and Chandler, of course. That covers most of them anyway. And that's good enough for me. And because Erin used to live with me, though I was much younger then, I'm sure I was still cranky sometimes. OK, probably a lot. (I'm sure I was the one yelling at everyone in our suite to shut up so I could sleep.) And I'm sure I said some things I didn't mean. (Actually, now I remember an argument we got into over politics. A story for another day.) Kind of like Saturday night when I was waaaay past hungry and was getting pretty cranky and said "I don't like you right now." She didn't grimace, cry, yell or take offense at all. I guess that (among other things) makes her my friend for life.