Oprah is to Gayle as I am to my best friend. I find it troubling when women claim they cannot be friends with other women because they are catty, out to get their men, jealous... The list goes on an on. My thought is.. What kind of friend are you? What type of friends do you attract? How in the WORLD can any woman survive today without the closeness of a good girlfriend? The support system they provide is invaluable. You can have male friends.. Even close male friends.. But they can never take the place of a best girlfriend. Although gay men come quite close.
My bestie and I have been through life's ups and downs. We have done things together.. separately.. One thing never wavered.. We did them with the support of the other. Even when we thought the other was completely out of their damn mind, we supported them and when the time came to start cleaning up the fall out we would swoop in with a vengeance. Nobody screws over my bestie on pain of death! Sadly.. Some of that loyalty was a bit misplaced or perhaps misguided. My bestie has done some things I clearly thought were not good ideas but I kept my mouth shut. Although I am a psych I am notoriously long on silence and short on advice. I believe people need to learn their own lessons. How can a spirit grow if it is always being shielded from experiences? So I stood by, helped even, her experience life. I wanted her to learn lessons for herself. Kinda like Oprah and Gayle. Those two are as thick as thieves. Their friendship mirrors ours. Don't mess with Gayle or you have a Harpie oops... I mean Hapo after you. And you do NOT want that. 
My best friend and I drove from California to Virginia quite similar to the road trip Oprah and Gayle took. We actually didn't get tired of each other. We sang songs (terribly), laughed, cried, saw America, felt racism, ate crappy food, ate gas station snacks, slept in sketchy motels, slept in wonderful hotels, saw friends, missed seeing friends, ate cupcakes, almost crossed the border into Mexico, drove at speeds exceeding 90 miles per hour, got sick of Texas, met Twitter friends, never passed up an outlet mall,  and a wealth of other experiences. You would think after 5 days in the car we would need a break. The moment we were apart I missed her dearly.
Our personalities are quite different yet surprisingly alike. (oxymoron alert) Education has always been the crux of who I am. When I dropped out of college she encouraged me to go back and finish. Then when I entered grad school she was my biggest cheerleader.. well.. besides my Mom.. I totally support her design business. To me everything she makes is magic and flawless. Any criticism of her work will bring out the furies. Someone foolishly attacked her on Twitter and I went after them like a Vampire after their prey. We all know how that scenario concludes. I am sure anyone who witnessed that will think a hundred thousand trillion times before tangling with either one of us.
We also got puppies together. Through circumstances beyond our control we lost our dogs. Mine to old age (17 years of Willie is more than anyone can ask for) hers to divorce (ex husbands need to be publicly flogged). Although we did not get the same breed of puppy we did both get Terrors, I mean Terriers.
Yeah.. We are a lot like Oprah and Gayle. Love us or hate us.. We have each other and that seems to be all we basically need. I might be the more gregarious of the two, but she shines bright in her own right.  We allow the other to be completely themselves flaws and all and oddly enough, the flaws are what makes our relationship perfect.

FIN