Kid Identifies Multiple “Backup Friends”

I wrote a thing about not-best-friends last year that I still really like, because it explores the concept of a friend-for-the-moment—a kind of friend I really love and have come to accept that I’ve become accustomed to, having grown up in a lot of different places and built up countless ephemeral friendships. I don’t know what that says about me as a friend in general, or what it must be like to be my friend when your experience of friendship carries with the kind of commitment that requires ranking and competition. I have a few friendships I value tremendously, but I have no best friend, and I’m cool with that.

Is that somehow akin to this idea Kina has of “backup friends” at school—a designation she’s given to almost every friend she has had since kindergarten? Maybe; it feels like it. These friends all know slightly different Kinas, as my friends all know slightly different Davids. Those Davids are “backup Davids” in a way—the Davids at the edge of other people. Kina’s just taking the other view, that these people are all there to meet a different edge of her.

Kina has tremendous fun with all her backup friends, and they all rub different edges of her as they pass through. They are (as I wrote last year) the running friend, the new home friend, the shoes friend, the friend to talk to at lunch, the falling-down friend, the parkour friend. They move in and out of focus, pass by at school dropoff, walk through the gates with Kina—who is at equal ease with each of them as they stroll across the yard. Together, they make up her collective best friend, who was never missing to begin with.

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