BFF

There's a special category of really good friend you make before you're six. Cranky #1 discovered her BFF at kindergarten meet-the-teacher and hasn't looked back. Similarly, Cranky #2 picked out her BFF by end-of-business on kindergarten opening day. "She just looked like a really good friend for me," C2 explained. At the end of her first playdate at BFF's house, she announced: "I want to be part of BFF's family." And to their everlasting credit, best friend's family didn't smile tightly and reflexively recoil.

Recently, BFF walked home from school with the Crankies, and en route she reflected on the responsibility of best-friendness. "It's not easy being Cranky #2's best friend," BFF observed seriously. "She hugs me really hard." Even if your politics and taste in significant others diverge wildly, your pre-6 BFF will remember that your panties had big picture of Cinderella on the butt, and that you used to hug really hard.

If MC's best-friend-since-we-were-four ever decides to write a tell-all, then MC is in big trouble. People who know the color of the shag carpet in your childhood bedroom are bound to have other intimate details in their files. Happily, the benevolent BFX4 publicly remembers only the least-embarrassing anecdotes. Since her knowledge of Cranky Farm lore is infinite, she is a fabulous reference for C1 and C2. Ask her about testing Cranky Sergeant's reflexes by putting a rubber snake in the garden: MC collapsed into the strawberry bed while watching her mother chop BFX4's rubber snake into tiny bits with a hoe. The snake was sliced like a loaf of French bread, Cranky Sergeant was triumphantly flustered, but MC and her BFX4 were transcendentally thrilled with the success of their joke.

The all-day breakfast joint with the gingerbread pancakes and Zen vibe features quotes on the back page of its menu. The one that resonates for Meta Cranky reads something like: "a good friend will visit you in prison. A really good friend will come to your lecture." Since she read that menu years ago, MC has developed her own list of what a really good friend will do: Be charming to your geezer relatives. Check your head for lice. Help you retrieve an impounded car and keep it a secret for 20 years. These are the friends, as an adult, you are drawn to because of their wit, their braininess, or their selfless generosity. Yet there are other friends who met you when you were just an illiterate mass of narcissistic id, and they loved you anyway.
--MC