Friends by Chance

“Amy. It used to be Lisa, but she’s been a real cunt since our dad died.”
-David Sedaris, author
April 27, 2023 Live Q&A, Paramount Theatre, Denver, Colorado

“Who is your favorite sibling?” Tina texted me, completely out of the blue.

Tina has always been my deep-thoughts friend. Over the lapse of our decade-plus long friendship, the deep-thoughts have become more perverse and the questions pack a heavier load. We can go months without interacting with each other, and then one of us will open a dialogue with a questionable assembly of semantics. Below are a few examples of our opening lines (it is not important who said what.)

“Is it off-putting to get married and not live together?” “Do you think the south pole is a time-warp?” “Dude, you should work at the morgue.” “Is it weird that I kinda wanna be in a Stockholm Syndrome type of relationship?” “What is life if nothing but a disturbing laugh.” “Do you ever keep a box of wine under your bathroom sink?”

So upon receiving this message from Tina at random asking who is my favorite sibling, I knew there were a myriad of layers I was required, by my friend, to unfold. Together, we were about to grow a tree; healthy branches of conversation without a clue how the fuck we got there.

I don’t often think about who my favorite sibling is, and sometimes I like one more than the others. We all do it. We all lean into a certain personality, or shared interest, or simply just cant’t stand the rest of them. Our parents do it, too.

As a child, my mom whispered in my ear, “you’re my favorite” while we were snuggling on a Sunday morning. I felt special, loved, and I was on my best behavior for a few hours. It made me feel good to be better. I found out years later she did that to all of us. My sister, Alyssa, had the same exact story. Michael assumes he’s the favorite because he is the first born. Marco knows he is the favorite because he is the baby. He clings to a phrase he heard once, “They could finally stop trying for the perfect child.”

We don’t get to choose our parents, and we certainly do not get to choose our siblings. It is at random, completely by chance. And what can be very special, or particularly suck, is that we’re sort of stuck with them.

So, before I divulge who my favorite sibling is, I’d like to briefly rant about friendships by chance, and how precious they are.

One could argue aren’t we all friends by chance? No. We are not.

We have our siblings, cousins, siblings of our siblings’ friends, those who we found good company during our brother’s double-header baseball games, and those we were forced to sit next to in the third grade. These are friends who we were usually meant to know, ignoring the lineage of chance that led us to where we were; you were likely going to meet.

Friends by chance are people you met completely out of nowhere: at the movie theatre on a school night, a night club in London, or bumping tubes on a river on the Fourth of July. People that cross our paths completely at random, because of choices we made at random.

The friends I’ve met by chance are some of the closest people to my heart. Our bond is special and unique. It’s as if they don’t know you, but at the same time know the best you; you can be whoever you want to be, but you always end up being your truest self; even though you had only met for five minutes, it’s like you’ve known them forever.

The best part is, you’re not stuck in the same way you’d be with family. Friends by chance have a meet-cute story, whereas my siblings were just some kids already living in my house.

Answering the question who is my favorite sibling felt dirty, like they’d all find out somehow; show up at my home with pitchforks. On par with arranged marriages, siblings are people our parent’s put in our world and we’re forced to get along with, love deeply at times, yet tried to kill the other 90% of the time. They all have reasons why I would choose them as well as things I’d like to fix about their personalities. Michael and I get along because we have similar interests and we’re the same kind of cool, but I’m an Aquarius and he is a lawyer. Alyssa is my confidant and has a high-level of emotional intelligence, but there used to be a time when I didn’t tell anyone I even had a sister. Marco is seemingly my perpetual roommate, so there’s that, but he does help take care of my dog and makes me laugh occasionally. I’d say I like them all the same, so how can I choose a favorite?

I decided to volley that question back to Tina, curious which of her four siblings she’d choose. Without a beat she responded, “Theresa. Anna as a second”. We went on to analyze why she didn’t choose the sister I like best, and how we didn’t even consider her only brother. Thinking I’d avoid having to answer, and potentially get accosted by my siblings one day as they unveil a printed copy of Tina’s phone records, she asked me again.

“So who’s your favorite?”

“Alyssa. For now.”