To F.R.I.E.N.D.S with love😊

 Phoebe Buffay from F.R.I.E.N.D.S is such a wonderful human who is weird and honest and so beautiful to look at and has some of the best costumes and hairstyles that are so becoming of her - just free spirited and true to her whole personality. I can't imagine Lisa Kudrow to be any less than the Phoebe she plays on FRIENDS. 

I have always wanted to be like Phoebe or have a friend who is like her, but in reality in my life there's no such character.

FRIENDS, to me, back in the late '90s and early 2000's was like a rite of passage to help me transition from teenage into early adulthood and growing up in a closed minded environment did not make it any easier to want to understand my sexuality without just the female biology that stood staring back at me in the mirror. 

My cousin and I managed to sneak into a storage room that had an old portable TV and switched on star world channel promptly at 8 PM and laughed our heads out. She(Meena) and I had healthy discussions over why she thinks Rachel goes way over line and Joey is just a plain naïve guy who just got lured by her charms, and that Joey was just too vulnerable without Chandler by his side. We agreed to disagree but came to some kind of concurrence that this was just a serial while eating our dinner, and just went about our college stuff and again came back to blacklisting Rachel for another of her drama queen sagas the next day☺

FRIENDS became so much a part of our consciousness and our patterns of thinking that if we inadvertently do something dumb and funny we would call ourselves "Duh.. I am being a Joey!," or shoot sarcastic wise cracks at others at home slyly and feel like a Chandler all the way!

They became a part of us and especially for Meena and me as we were the same age almost and giggled a lot when we got together at the stupid jokes we played on each other and spoke in hushed tones while joking about others at home. I had the assurance that if not finding a Phoebe in the outside world, I have a "Chandler like" Meena at home😊

I guess it's over 2 decades since Meena and I sat down together to watch FRIENDS and relive our silly giggly moments, but I am glad that I still have her as one of my close sisters and friends. Binge watching FRIENDS on Netflix is not the same without Meena but I am glad that despite the awkwardness, hardships, ups and downs that my growing up was full of but FRIENDS just let me be and made my problems feel smaller.

There are many other fun, heartwarming stories, serials that we have all grown up with and each has a place of their own in our hearts, in our lives. The joy of growing up as I may dare say now is that FRIENDS continues to feel the same and that I have not lost my humor no matter how unexpected the blows in my life. Here's to more such fun reliving down memory lane💗