We'll be frands foraver

It is friendship day, yet another slotted day given to us to celebrate that which doesn't need a day to be celebrated. Having said that, I'm still in favour of setting aside a day to celebrate things like love, friendship, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers - those which we would never end up celebrating as much if we didn't have a special day dedicated.

So I fondly reminisce the days when we wore uniforms and met each other with typical school-girl fervour to glorify our own interpretations of friendship. The day had an extra dash of colour, possibly symbolic of what (we thought) the friendships brought into our life.

I recall the more talented and the more dedicated of us persevering for days before, making pretty little hand accessories, more famously known as the Friendship Bands. The rest of us either attempted shoddier versions or settled for the store-bought versions of our loyalty to friends. They served as more than just testimony of our long-standing friendship. For some of us, it was an opportunity to befriend another. (Possibly someone of the opposite sex that you've been eying for some time.) And for some it was a fine time to make amends with a person you've been warring with since last year.

If we didn't have a shortage of bands we'd give them to almost anyone whom we'd usually have as much as a casual conversation with. The real friends were yet to be filtered out by then. You have to have some troubled and testing times to identify the diamonds, don't you? And so it was. It took years to see the real ones shining through. And not surprisingly, they were the ones I'd known the longest. We grew in a similar environment, and that probably fashioned our compatibility the way 'compatible' must be. As we grew, I came across a few more gems, but they weren't as easy to come by anymore. I feel it had less to do with the world outside, than it had with the time we now allow another person to size up as a friend.

At the risk of sounding old and unable to keep up with the times, I say that friendship isn't what is used to be. And then to show that I can keep up with the times, I say friendship is still around, its just different. There are some people you can count on, but it no longer needs a band - thank the stars for that. For an adult, it is an implicit understanding. An unspoken dictum. If you're still around after all that, you're in. And oh, I hope you can laugh.

I did not want to end this with corny notes, and so I will end it with one that sounds ridiculous yet rings vaguely true: (source unknown)

Friends are like Bacon bits in the Salad Bowl of life.

:)