A depressing look at how I rank friendships

Making friends can be hard. Ranking them is tougher.

When you make childhood friends, the evaluation method is simple: You (ideally) have a best friend, then others. You sometimes rank friends: A best friend, an inner circle (relatives, school mates, neighborhood pals, etc.) and  a larger group of acquaintances. But you have a best friend.

It's easy. When I was 9, my best friend was Troy, my next-door neighbor. Anyone who knew us knew we were best friends, forged out of a shared interest of being the youngest siblings and living close to each other. We built a fort together. We made up nicknames for each other. We were best friends.

Fast-forward 15 years.

In your 20s, you have friends and colleagues.  In my early 20s, I wasn't so concerned about who was my best friend, but which of my friends would be in my wedding. For me, it wasn't particularly tough: When Mrs. Brad and I married, I went with the guys I saw regularly and who I trusted. I picked three buddies, my future brother-in-law and a pseudo little brother. Troy, by the way, was long gone.

Fast-forward 10 more years and the friend-ranking world changed again.

By my mid-30s, my rankings focus was different. It was now a question of who would raise our kids should Mrs. Brad and I be killed in a plane crash (and by that, we meant being hit by a crashing plane, since we rarely flew). The criteria were who was close to us, knew our family and shared our values. (Also, it needed to be someone who could fit two additional kids in their family car.)

For us, it was  easy – we picked our closest friends from our hometown, who were both the obvious choice and willing. Neither of them, by the way, had been in our wedding. They were friends who became really close friends after our marriage started.

Fast forward two decades to now.

The way I evaluate friends at this stage – childhood is a distant memory, my wedding was decades ago, my kids are adults – has changed. Again.

It's not picking a "best friend."

It's not choosing who would be in a wedding.

It's not picking who would take care of my children.

It's . . .

Who Mrs. Brad should ask to carry my casket in the event of my untimely demise.

Yeesh.

Seriously. I'm hopefully decades from death (barring being hit by a crashing plane), but the way I currently rank  friends is to decide which six guys should carry my casket and which of them should be asked to speak at my funeral. I had coffee recently with my friend Steve (one of the six and one of the speakers) and he agreed.

Curious.

For me, the sad part is the realization that, when it comes down to it, the way we pick our closest friends (or the way I do, at least) is selfish. It's who's most useful to us.

As a kid, it's who is most fun.

When marriage arrives, it's who fills out the wedding party.

When kids arrive, it's who can step in and substitute.

And when we get older, it's who will memorialize us and carry our casket.

You want to be my friend? Be prepared to carry my coffin!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.