“One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24
My daughter had her Valentine’s Day party today. It was a rare Friday when all of her classmates were there. I was happy for her because it meant she could party down with her avowed “best friend.”
She’s five, and so are her classmates, which means they’ll all be heading to kindergarten next year. Our daughter goes to this particular daycare because it’s close to where we work, not our home, which is fifty minutes away.
The upshot? When she starts kindergarten next year, none of her current classmates will be at her school.
I’m happy that she’s made a best friend. Last year, the classmate she constantly talked about was a boy or as she periodically called him, her “boy friend.” That boy is in kindergarten now. I’m happy about that too.
Before that, she would talk less about the actual boys and girls her class than she would her make-believe younger sisters, Piara and Tiara. Her friends were imaginary…and related to her.
Typically, she would request that I scold the pair for not being good at school. She wouldn’t play with the twins so much as tell us about what were playing, assuming the role of a journalist sending reports from the front lines.
This current best friend emerged during the early days of January 2021. We began hearing more and more about my daughter’s escapades with her.
But the real “best friend” alliance was forged by clothing.
As we drove home one day, my daughter told me that she and her best friend had jointly decided to wear the same outfit the next day.
All evening long, my daughter told me of the plan. “She’s going to wear the same dress as me.”
I was skeptical. This was the girl who had told her teacher that her parents were going on a trip to South America, a fabrication told with enough sincerity that the teacher actually asked me if we were going.
But my wife bought in, and our daughter wore her pre-planned dress.
When I brought my daughter into her class the next morning, her friend had already arrived. There she sat in the exact dress of my daughter— a magenta one-piece with little foxes on it.
It makes me sad that our daughter won’t get to go to school with this friend after this semester.
But she is amiable and outgoing. She will have new best friends.
Of course, I will remind her — when she gets sad about not seeing this best friend anymore — that in Jesus she has a friend who is closer to her than any sister.
Even Piara and Tiara.