I Have a Paddle Game, a Remote Control, this Ashtray, a Magazine, and a Chair. That’s All I Need. Oh, and this Thermos.

You’ll have to forgive me if I seem a bit distracted. Today is Best Friend’s Day, so I am waiting by the phone and refreshing my email every five minutes in case someone invites me to dinner or to have a drink after work. I didn’t receive any lunch invitations, so instead I ate some noodles at my desk and don’t think I’m not bitter about that. If one of my so-called friends doesn’t contact me by 3:00 PM, I’m going to call each and every one of them and yell angrily. When they ask why I’m mad, I’ll drop my voice to a whisper and say, “you know what you did” then slam the phone down. I plan on using the corded phone on the land line. It’s the best way to hang up on someone.

I was trying to find an official link to Best Friend’s Day, but all I could find were links to sites I’ve never heard of and MySpace, and I can’t go to MySpace because I had a falling out over there with Tom, who acts like he’s your friend but he’s really not. He probably friends everyone and then ignores them. Creep.

The concept of “best friend” is probably not all that useful much past college-age or so. In fact, it just seems like it would create problems where none existed before. Say you’re having a conversation with a friend, during the course of which you refer to someone else as your “best friend.” This is just going to cause the friend you’re talking with to feel hurt and angry. She may even say, “and just exactly where do I fall in your hierarchy of friendship? Well? WELL?” Or maybe I’m the only one who says that. Sometimes I like to mess with people.

Not that I don’t divide friends up into different categories. I have Work Friends. I have Lunch Friends, which is a subcategory of Work Friends, although since I hardly ever go into the office, those two categories have more or less merged. I have Friends From When I Was a Kid. College Friends. Law School Friends (also known as “People I Don’t Like Very Much”). Blog Friends. Why Am I Friends With This Person Friends. No Best Friends though. I sort of miss that, but at the same time, it’s nice not to have to be there for someone all the time. Sometimes I just want to go out for Mexican food and talk about The Amazing Race, but best friends tend to expect that you care about their stupid problems. I’ve got my hands full with my own stupid problems.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about Carol, who used to be both a Lunch Friend and a Why Am I Friends With This Person Friend. When I moved to California for a few years, we morphed initially into being Email Friends and eventually into Complete Strangers. However, I saw her a few weeks ago because I was at the university where she still works, and for no real reason I stopped by her office. Talking to her reminded me of why we’re strangers now. She’s horrible! I hate her! Oh my god! I think I might call her later, yell at her, and then slam down the phone. Just because.

To put it into context, I hadn’t talked to Carol in seven or eight years. The last time we talked was after I had moved back to Seattle and was in the process of remodeling my house. I mentioned to her that I was kind of sick of having all these contractors around every day, working at a glacial pace, and using up all the toilet paper. She replied, “I think you love it. I think you love having your house full of men. That’s why you’re remodeling your kitchen in the first place.” Did I mention that was the last time we talked? I’m not sure what prompted me to go see her when I was on campus recently, but the good news is that I’m not the least bit sad that we’re not friends anymore. She’s horrible! I hate her! I know I already said that, but oh my god! She’s the worst!

She was pretty nice to me, but she spent a good twenty minutes badmouthing John, a friend of hers (ahem) and her husband’s. I met John at lunch many years ago — actually I think Carol and her husband might have been trying to fix us up — and he’s a very nice man whose picture is in the dictionary next to the word “nerd.” He was very smart but very shy, and as I understand it, he spent every Saturday night at Carol’s house eating dinner, watching videos, and then having work conversations with her husband in which they spoke exclusively in “1″s and “0″s. For years, this is what they did every Saturday night. But now, according to Carol, they no longer have movie night because John has done the unforgivable thing of having a girlfriend for the first time in … well, ever, probably. Carol said (and you have to imagine her saying this in a nasal, bitter way), “John doesn’t even come to the house anymore. He spends all his time with her. He thinks he’s in love, but she’s so trashy. She’s divorced and has kids and is only with him because she wants someone to support her. I told him that, but he didn’t want to hear it. He’s like an emotional virgin.” Emotional virgin? Hell, I’m pretty sure he’s an actual virgin. In any event, I tried to explain to Carol that people don’t generally like it when you refer to the person they love as gold-digging trash, but she seemed to think we were all unreasonable on this point. She’s so horrible. I hate her.

The other reason I’ve been thinking about her, aside from my renewed hatred, is that she once also disparaged another friend of hers who had shortly before that published a novel. According to Carol, it was a terrible novel, from an “unknown” publishing house, the author photo was really ugly and included a stupid looking hat, and her friend would never ever get published again because she had no writing talent. After a couple of questions, I determined that Carol had not actually read her friend’s novel nor did she have any intention of doing so. But then, she never was one to let reality get in the way of a good belittling.

I’ve been thinking about that because a couple of weeks ago, I was browsing the books at Target and, in the children’s section, saw a book written by someone whose name I recognized as being a friend from grade school. At first I assumed it had to be someone else because how could a fifth-grader write a book? Then I remembered she probably got older as well. Upon reading the acknowledgments section, I saw that she mentioned another name I recognized, so I knew it was her. And the author’s page indicated that it was her third book. I bought it and, initially, just felt so pleased for her. She’s a published author! How cool is that? I also looked her up online, and found her profile page on the Random House website. She won some type of Rising Star award and her photo was beautiful. I read the book that I bought, and it was very cute and funny, and I think she’s going to continue to have a lot of success.

But then I shifted into feeling envious. She was someone I didn’t remember very well until I saw her book, but after I started thinking about it, I remembered that she a few other girls Mean-Girled me in the fourth grade. I remembered that she used to have a big mole on her face. I remembered that her brother was kind of slow. (To be fair, I remember everyone’s brother as being kind of slow. I’m sure her brother is perfectly standard.) I read the customer reviews of her first book on Amazon and was the tiniest bit pleased about some of the more critical remarks. I am horrible! Oh my god! I hate myself! NO WONDER NO ONE WANTS TO HAVE DINNER WITH ME ON BEST FRIEND’S DAY!

I’m sure I’ll get over it. Or 99% sure anyway.

Oooh, I have to go now. It’s 3:00, and I’ve got some phone calls to make.