Best friends are different than parents or siblings – these special people understand and relate to both your serious and peculiar sides. They play various roles, from life counselor to personalized Spotify. This checklist doesn’t come close to covering all the requirements to be officially labeled as a “best friend,” but you’re certainly on track if you can relate. Doesn't matter if you make B.F.F.L.s (for those of you unfamiliar with the acronym Best Friends For Life) in junior school, high school or college, they all must be willing to…
1. Listen to you rant for an hour about a personal problem that is really only worth one minute of any sane person’s time.
2. After listening to your “real issues,” pretend to give a damn (or bonus, pile on top of your irrationality with their own melodramatic opinions).
3. Give amazing advice, for anything from high-risk guy problems to which Netflix series to start binge-watching next.
4. FaceTime (or any kind of video chat) within five minutes of a notification text, or talk for three hours at a predetermined time.
5. Mock your most awkward moments, but with a hint of genuine admiration for your weirdness.
6. Make you laugh so hard tears come to your eyes, so that you either fall out of your chair or collapse while standing.
7. Routinely make reference to inside jokes that are insulting to practically everyone else.
8. Make derp-y facial expressions to each other from across the classroom or the campus quad.
9. Shamelessly scream your name and enthusiastically cheer to embarrass you during a presentation or performance.
10. Maintain a Snapchat streak mainly consisting of unappealing selfies and filters that could fit under the dictionary entry of "repulsive."
11. Tag you in a plethora of trashy and/or relatable memes from multiple forms of social media.
12. Suffer through awkward photo shoots to find that perfect Insta-worthy lighting, angle and pose.
13. Dance their hearts out with you in the strangest (but most heartfelt) of body contortions with no rhythm whatsoever.
14. Hardcore jam out to your favorite musical artists, because what’s karaoke without all the pubescent voice cracks and personalized lyrics since you never learned the true words to that throwback song?
15. Make unhealthy life choices with you, like convincing you not to exercise at the gym but still eat that entire pint of rocky road ice cream.
16. Answer your questions before you even ask them.
17. Introduce you to cultural aspects of their lives, whether it be tradition or food, that you learn to love equally as much as they do.
18. Sacrifice their dignity and freedom to emotionally, mentally and physically support your decisions, good or bad. Not to mention, help you avoid the loner status as the go-to wingman.
19. If in college or away from home, reminisce and cry with you about the differences in the people, food, weather and everything in between.
20. Drop everything to relish in your moments of joy, rare or frequent, even when they have no idea what you are celebrating.
21. Resist verbalizing their judgment of your most moronic actions or words when you confess to them.
22. At times of wallowing in self-misery, share their own terrible and awkward moments to help you feel better about yourself.
23. In the most critical of moments, believe in you more than you could ever believe in yourself.
