They say you find your best friends in college. Lifelong friends that will be in your wedding, your husbands will hang out, and they'll throw you your baby shower. It's easy to quickly form unbreakable bonds with your college friends. You live with them, you go through ultimately the biggest life changes in young adulthood with them. You get dumped with them, you do the dumping with them, they hold your hair back on wild nights. You cry and you laugh with them unlike you've cried or laughed with anyone else. You are around them 24/7.
It's easy to see why we find our bridesmaids in college, but childhood friends are just as important. When you stay friends with a friend from middle school, elementary school or even preschool, they see you through everything--and they love you anyway.
Here are the five best things about having a childhood best friend:
1. They knew you before you were cool.
^(No. You do not want to remember.)
OK, you both know you were never cool, but these people knew you prepuberty. They knew you at middle school dances, through your first crush, and everything in between. They know your quirks and how awkward you used to be (are) and they still want to be around you anyway.
2. You've had fights. And you've survived them.
When you've known your best friend since kindergarten, you're bound to disagree over something over the course of sixteen years. You're even bound to want to rip each others' heads off (the best part of that is you didn't). When you've known someone since childhood, you know you can overcome obstacles.
3. They know your coffee order.
Caramel iced coffee with skim milk. This may not seem important, but it is. When you first get your driver's license and go on countless Dunkin runs, you know how they take their coffee like the back of your hand. It's also a plus that they trusted you as a novice driver.
4. You can handle time apart.
When you go to a different college as a best friend, often times you come home and you can feel the time and distance between you two. But when you have a strong relationship with a childhood friend, often times it's like you can pick up right where you left off.
5. They know your family.
Everyone has crazy families. When your best friend can come on over any time (mine lives down the street) and fit in like one of you...
Well, that's just coming home.
