FRIENDSGIVING: The Evolution of Friendship told through ‘Friends’ episode titles

 by Wyatt Bazrod

(featuring many pictures of himself & Emily Sermons)

“The One With the Bullies”

It all started in Mrs. Cotton's 10th grade biology class. I sat next to Emily and for a while, we were merely acquaintances. But as the semester progressed, we both quickly realized we shared some very key similarities such as:: 1) we liked to dish out sass at any opportunity and 2) we liked dishing out sass to one another but soon there was 3) where we could both take sass without being offended and possibly even 4) talking over the teacher is warranted if you have a lot of feelings about a certain television show with teenage kids that like to sing and dance but quite honestly it was 5) we had no idea what the fuck biology actually was but more importantly 6) we really didn’t give a shit.

These foundations were what started the friendship and what got us the title from Mrs. Cotton as ‘bullying other classmates.’ I would merely say the other students weren’t on our level yet.

"The One with the Invitation”

Shortly after ‘officially’ becoming fellow biology bullies, we decided to take the next step. And what better a next step for two extremely angsty teenagers than for Emily inviting me to watch Glee with a group of her friends at her house. This quickly became a weekly ritual, with each of the group members subjecting one of our poor parents that week to one McKinley High in Lima, Ohio [WHY DO I REMEMBER THIS!!!!].

After a short time, we started going on coffee dates because we realized we were some of the *first* in our graduating class to realize the feelings of being tired and dead inside can all go away with a fresh brew of coffee. Actually we’re cheap. Any brew of coffee would do the job.

These dates are where the house of our friendship started to rise from its foundation. Lengthy discussions on the validity of Kurt and Blaine’s romance, the total stress of AP classes, and wanting to dropout and become a prostitute dominated many a chai chats. (also the validity of the Oxford comma and pretending you thought you hated it because it was fun seeing Emily frustrated, more so than if you tell her Harry and Hermione were meant for each other).

"The One with All the Resolutions”

This is where things started becoming more serious. Emily was one of the first people I came out to. Some weeks later, not to me, but probably in her conscience, Emily vowed to never have her bangs cut the way that they were at her 8th grade dance [if you haven’t seen them, find me on Instagram and scroll down; you’ll find them in no time!] nor to wear ties with pink sunglasses like the little Avril Lavigne in her was dying to do.

We also both made a promise to each other. We would tear the other one’s asses to shreds if we ever seriously wore another fedora again. {One time we went on a fedora date in the park and i maintain to this day we haven’t done anything nearly as stupid or offensive since!!}

"The One with Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E.” or "The One with All the Cheesecakes" or maybe “The One with All the Candy” or even "The One with the Cake”

Picking a title for this section proved to be the hardest so I decided to incorporate all of these for a few reasons. 1) Because food is the cornerstone of our friendship. Literally, 80% of the time we hung out in high school, it was to go eat food followed by getting coffee. The other 20% of the time it was watching Glee (again, I will own up to it that we, at one point, were OBSESSED with that show and sang all of the songs in public okay? we all have to repent for something!!!) but included in those Glee sessions were a lot of popcorn bags so maybe we can just say 100% of our friendship revolves around food. 2) The four titles above are even more appropriate because notice what they all have in common? They are not healthy. If 100% of our friendship is based around food, then at least 85% is around junk food. And the biggest takeaway is 3) we NEVER judged for what the other ate. Quite frankly it was the topics at hand that were more important (okay you guessed it, Glee again). I promise we became more interesting adults with college!!! Well...

"The One Where No One's Ready”

So we bonded over our sass. Our questionable teenage fashion. Our love affair with sweets and utter devotion to caffeine. Our biggest challenge, (for which Emily will probably hold a separate opinion), was college. Emily wanted to do something with graphic design and I wanted to do something around engineering. And after a long stressful year of applications, follow-ups, crying, and stalking admissions counselors on Twitter [for Emily], we went to rival schools. Georgia/Georgia Tech. So this was the first time since our friendship began where we would truly be apart. And we were sad.

Except then we weren’t because after a few short months [weeks??], Emily realized that Georgia Tech had a better degree with more technical aspects that she was looking for, so she decided to transfer and the rest of the year was a waiting game with lots of Face-timing and planning for the remaining years to come.

“The One With the Proposal”

So now we’ve almost caught up to the present. Except it was last October our friendship took an even bigger step: we proposed…to live together!!! So there you have it.

Boy met girl. Girl met boy. Boy and girl made fun of each other. Boy and girl realize they’d be an even better duo and make fun of other people. Boy comes out to girl. Girl lols. Girl and boy watch glee and obsess over fictional characters while eating questionable foods until college where boy and girl separate physically while still talking regularly before girl chooses to come to boys college and boy and girl more in together and still drink alarmingly high amounts of coffee with a dose of cynicism.