My F.R.I.E.N.D.S Story

It all started one day while I was in fifth grade. My mom was re-married and I didn't really know my new dad at the time, (don't worry we are awesome now all these years later) I was sick at home one day and watching whatever was on TV, if you were sick from home back then you know what was locally available. My dad came in and looked at the TV and asked me if I liked what was on I shrugged and told him , "Not really." He went back to my parents' room and came back with a set of VHS tapes and he popped one in. It was Season 1 of FRIENDS, yes people we have LIFT OFF.

We watched the whole first season before the end of the night when my mom got home from work. That next weekend we watched the second season and it was so fun we had the whole she-bang snacks and laughs. After that he collected the next seasons on DVD for us to watch together and we laughed and cried and yelled, "PIVOT!" and when we got to the end I remember crying so hard and my dad handed me a bag of M&Ms and we got through it together.

To this day I don't have a lot in common with my dad, but we can always be sarcastic as Chandler and eat like Joey together. There are a lot of times I will say something sarcastic to my mom or younger siblings and my mom will just shake her head look at my dad and say,

"THAT'S all YOU. We didn't have that level of sarcasm in this house until you got here." And He'll just laugh and say,

"She's got good sarcasm though."

My mother often describes me as a mix of Chandler, Joey and Phoebe because I'm constantly sarcastic, love food and have always been my own level of unique. And she describes my best friend as a mix of Rachel for style and Monica because she does tend to be very OCD clean. We sometimes feel bad for leaving Ross out of the mix but unless we identify with "Red Ross" we don't really connect with him. We do lose our cool if our food is taken from the fridge because; "It's not very good for my rage."

When my husband started first dating me I quickly got him into FRIENDS and I always believed someone's reaction to someting you love and connect with can tell a lot about a person. It took him a few episodes but he qickly got into it and now we can quote them all the time to each other. One Mother's Day he happened to be on FaceBook and see that some one was selling the full 10 Season Collection DVDs for a really good price and he went out and got them that same night and surprised me with them and I have cherished them ever since.

To this day whenever I am feeling down or need to just have some more light in my life I will just pop in a FRIENDS DVD and just watch them from beginning to end. I still laugh, I still cry, I quote almost every line. And I can tell you when Netflix/HBO Max doesn't have the good jokes from the DVDs. I can find a scene for pretty much any life situation and story. And yes I do judge people who don't like them. I will look at my husband and ask him how they can't like them and he just shrugs it off like it's nothing.

These people are for real, my FRIENDS. They have been there for me through thick and thin and helped me through my ups and downs. And for anyone that needs that type of company they have the perfect saying;

I'll * Be * There * For * You