One is Silver, The Other Gold

Last Saturday night, the hub and I found ourselves doing what many married couples do on a late spring evening: walking toward an informal gathering on someone’s porch. What made this so unusual for me is the fact that my husband works on weekend nights, so I’m rather out-of-touch with the whole schmoozing scenario. 

The get-together was a quick “wine and dine” before a group outing to Marlton to watch my husband perform. While I’ve always known just the right thing to say to young’uns, walking into a gaggle of grown-ups I barely know makes me feel as if I’m wearing a Depends on the outside of my control-top mom jeans.

We were all about the same age—fiftysomething—and pretty close to being in the same stage of life, with most of our active parenting behind us. As I folded myself into the group, I tried to piece together what was being discussed. The conversation was going something like this:

“Oh yeah! She used to vault over the back of the sofa. She doesn’t do that anymore.” (Who? His wife? Was this some weird suburban sex game???)

“Mine is still totally wacko.”

“I jog with mine. She likes to do about three miles.”

Then it hit me like a snack-sized Milk-Bone thrown directly at my head. They were all talking about their dogs! With two furry oldsters of my own, I felt right at home listening to their tales (tails) of bad behavior, and hoped to insert several of my own dog stories. How interesting that in our 40s, we would have been bragging about our children. In our 50s, we are now talking about our canines in much the same way.

I shared that with the porch-sitters and watched, in horror, as all conversation stopped. I could see the others processing my observation:

“She’s right. We’re 50 and we’re boring.”

“Maybe we should have a few more kids. Or dogs.”

“Who is this idiot anyway?”

Then, everyone laughed in recognition and the conversation flowed in other directions. One of the guys mentioned Michael Vick and, as if a secret signal had been given, the masculine talk went football while the women admired the irises and talked about gardens. Or any of the mundane minutiae women share in their public encounters with other women. In private, however, women share an intimacy that men do not.

Men and women have vastly different friendships. Women often have friendships that are intense and highly personal. Many women will even tell you their relationships with other women can be as passionate as an all-consuming love affair. And can hurt just as much.

I bet every woman reading this column can think of that special gal pal that broke her heart, or that “bestie” who is no longer part of her life. Almost 20 years later, and I still feel shards of pain when I think about a former friend in California. It ended badly when she called my 3-year-old son “maniacal” and suggested he needed therapy. (Apropos of nothing, she’s been married three times at last count and my son is doing very well, thank you.)

If I were to ask my husband if he has ever had a friendship go south, I’m pretty sure he’d shrug and ask me what I was making for dinner. This is not to say men are shallow, because they’re not. They’re just different. Male friendships seem to involve sports—either passively with a brewski and some Doritos, or physically with some one-on-one in the paint. And while many women enjoy a round of golf with their gal pals, the focus of women’s friendships seems to be talking and sharing rather than a quick game of touch football on Memorial Field.

And is it my imagination, or are men less critical of each other than women? I can’t say with utter certainty I know everything that men talk about, but I DO know females can be brutally critical of their gender. On the Internet, I came across two books with titles I found quite disturbing: Mean Girls, Meaner Women: Understanding Why Women Backstab, Betray and Trash-Talk Each Other and How to Heal and The Twisted Sisterhood: Unraveling the Dark Legacy of Female Friendships.

I could list at least six books with similar titles, yet I double-dog dare you to find anything similar about men’s friendships. Is that because males and their mates are less complicated? Quicker to forgive and forget?

Years ago when my mother hit her head in a terrible fall, the first person I called was my BFF. I told her what had happened and asked her to look in on my teenage boys. I was speeding to Cooper Hospital because that's where the ambulance takes a suspected head trauma.

The ER waiting room resembled a raucous party—minus libations and hilarity. A crusty woman with an army of plastic bags had staked out a row of chairs and was cursing loudly as she shooed everyone else away. A young guy’s heavily tattooed arm was dangling like a loose noodle from his dislocated shoulder. There was crying, blood, chaos and me, alone. I decided the best course of action was to examine my lap until someone told me otherwise.

Then the chair-hoarder shrieked. Up went my eyes, and there, wading through the whirling mass of ER lunacy, was my dear BFF. She, who hates driving in any city, had driven herself to scary Camden to comfort me.

“Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other is gold.”

My sentiments exactly.