Can we be F.R.I.E.N.D.S?

Can we really be F.R.I.E.N.D.S?

Much like every other Friends-a-holic, I started fantasising and comparing me and my friends to each of the characters from the superhit sit-com, right from the time I fell in love with the six of them. I would behave like Joey/Chandler and I’d pretend that my friends were all those characters, who had some similar character trait. I even fantasied how it would be if I had such a group of people in my life. I am sure all of you did that and If you have one such group, I am really happy for you.

But giving it a much deeper thought, I asked myself, “Are we out of our minds!??”. Did we really compare ourselves to them? Okay so, for a second let’s step out of reality and go into this fictional world. Well people, to us it may just be 256 episodes of a sitcom, but for the characters in the show, in their world, it’s about 3650 days at the least. All 6 of them  were together for more than 10 years and some of them had relationships with some others right from highschool or from kindergarden.

But even so, if we live in their world, Can ‘we’ really be F.R.I.E.N.D.S?

Okay, Think about this – How many of you people accepted your friends as however they’re – With all their strengths, weaknesses, egos, insecurities, decisions and heart breaks?

How many of you would’nt judge or bitch about a friend who had a very bad break up or a divorce, because he said the wrong name in the altar or because his wife realised that she was a homosexual and not a heterosexual?

 

How many of you would’ve still chosen to be friends with a person like Joey, who mistook your offer for a lemonade as an offer for sex, in your first meeting?

 

Well, would you have at least been in any equation with a guy who sleeps around and not call any of his dates, even when that date maybe a person you know?

 

Would you have been there for your friend who just ran away from her wedding altar and would you have taken any initiative to help her find her own foot? But yes, Monica was there for Rachel.

 

How many of you people would have been friends (at the least) with a person who once ridiculed you for being fat or for being a loner? or with someone who accidentally cut your toe and because of which you were called “Sir-Limps-a-lot” ?

 

Would you even think of being friends with someone like Rachel who has a very unstable relationship with your brother and who flew all the way to London to express her feelings for Ross just before his marriage, knowing very well that it might destroy the wedding? She even encouraged Bonnie to shave her head so that it might create some disturbance in Bonnie’s relationship with Ross.

 

Imagine being a Joey when Chandler kissed Kathy or imagine being a Chandler when Joey asks him to get into a wooden box as a punishment. I don’t really see myself having any friend like Chandler, who would pay me money endlessly for all my needs, without complaining or even hesitating, and also when he fully knows that I don’t take up my job as an actor very seriously. No friend would do that, but hey maybe that’s one of the reasons why they’re BEST BUDS, which we may never be.

 

And hey if I were Ross, and if I found out that it was Phoebe who mugged me as a kid, you’d have seen a “Ross sized hole in Central Perk’s door”

I really don’t know what I’d do if I fell in love with my best friend who just had a kid with another best of my mine.

I could go on and on like this, taking examples from every episode and even if we all could do all those things, yet we may never be like them. Just visualise this – Take away all those jokes, the audience laughter, the hanging out sessions and the different relationship scenarios and what’s left is a group of friends with very sad lives.

Ross, with his failed marriages and his amazing flirting skills. Chandler, with his bad childhood, his commitment issues and the fact that everyone thinks he is gay. Monica, with all the fat shaming she had to endure, a constantly criticising mother and irregular romantic relationships.  Rachel, a Daddy’s little princess, who transforms into an independent women and battles with career choices, and personal relationships. Joey, with his poor acting career, his responsibilities as a brother to his seven sisters and with dating women who eat his fries ( Ughh!!). Phoebe, well….everything? – About which she gladly jokes about.

These are people like you and me, but “no one told us life CAN be this way” and so they entered our lives and our hearts, and they’re always there for us. May be that was the whole point – “We may never be like them but we can be much more than what we are”

This show was there for us even when we were as alone as even Mr Heckles never was. This show was there for us when we had anxiety issues, anger issues, relationship issues, career issues and the times when we wanted to strangle all humanity and live in a planet far away from the earth.

This show was there for you because, “Your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s D.O.A. It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear and it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year”

And I think it is because we always desire to have such friends in our life and deep down we know that it may not be possible ever in our reality but yet we still cannot avoid that teeny bit of hope in our hearts and so for the time being we just comfort ourselves by living with Joey, Chandler, Phoebe, Monica, Ross and Rachel and having 2 cheese pizzas on fridays.