Best Friends Day

Set your cell phone alarm, mark your calendar, and write it across the top of your hand in red ink. Get ready for Best Friends Day (BFD), sponsored by DoSomething.org and BFF Entertainment. The two groups have declared June 8th, 2009 a national day of celebration for best friends to do something together to change the world.

What can two best friends do on that day to have fun, show affection for each other, and do something that has a larger impact by helping others? DoSomething and BFF have come up with some great suggestions:

1) If you use Twitter and add the hashtag #BFF to your tweet, your message to your friend will be streamed onto the iconic Times Square billboard in New York City on that day. Everyone will know that you are participating in Best Friends Day☺.

2) You can text “bff” to 30644 and sign up to volunteer or tell how you have changed the world.

3) If you send a BFF Bouquet from 1-800-FLOWERS on the day, a percentage of the sale will be donated to Do Something.org

4) Tune in to The Today Show, which will air a Best Friends Day feature on June 8th. Perhaps you’ll get another idea of how to help.

5) If you are a teen, get involved with DoSomething.org/---the organization that uses “the power of online to get teens to do good stuff offline.” If you are an old person (over the age of 20) or you’re privileged to have a business, check out DoSomething on the web and come up with your own unique way to participate and help.

The CEO, creative force, and cheerleader for the non-profit is attorney Nancy Lublin, who dubs herself ‘chief old person.’ In that role, Lublin raises funds from the corporate sector to support grants that help teens get things done. Last year alone, DoSomething.org inspired and empowered 12 million kids to get involved in a variety of projects in their local communities. This isn’t Lublin’s first successful philanthropic venture. At the age of 23, she created Dress for Success, an organization that provides women with the tools and confidence they need to succeed in their careers. That non-profit has expanded to more than 70 cities in four countries.

(Disclosure: I'm proud that my son, Andrew, was privileged to work with the wonderful team at DoSomething.)  

Oops, I blinked and I missed it. I just found out that Sunday, June 8th was Best Friends Day, which completed passed me by. I don’t know how. I didn’t even pause to pay homage to my own Besties on that day. Shame on me!

That morning one of my closest friends called while waiting for her flight at an airport terminal in Tampa. I’m sure Linda didn’t know it was Best Friends Day but she seizes every moment to catch up with me when she is waiting----sometimes in the strangest of places.

This typically includes doctors’ waiting rooms; hair salons during the trip between the sink and the stylist’s chair; dentist chairs while she is waiting for the doc after her cleaning; ladies room while she is tinkling; nail shops while she is waiting for her nails to dry; and long post office lines---to name just a few. Only a few short years ago it seems, she would call while she was waiting for her now-grown son to get dismissed from school and run to her car.

Well my promised day for me, Best Friends Day, eluded me like so many others: laundry, dishes, chores and then a brunch/fund-raiser for a local NAMI group. But it wasn’t all work and no play. I met some lovely work-friends at the event. Afterwards I came home to write one of the remaining chapters of a book on schizophrenia that I’m finishing up finally (more to come in a future post). At least it wasn’t another day of writer’s isolation which has come to characterize so many recent nights and weekends as I wait to wrap things up and get back into friendship.

They say that all good things come to those who wait. Check in with me again on August 3rd, Friendship Day. Can you please remind me if I forget?