I read somewhere once about how human cells "specialize". Like, there is a certain point very early-on in human development where cells are just cells: They contain all the DNA and all that, but they're not skin cells or bone cells or nerve cells; they're just cells. Once they do specialize, they become skin or bone or nerve, and there's no way to reverse the process. Something about cloning I think, or maybe trying to get a human to grow a new limb the way frogs do like if you cut off its legs, a frog will grow new legs and no one knows how. In humans, you can't grown bone or muscle from skin, even though they all have the same DNA. The point is, these little blobs of DNA contain all the same genetic material as the mature cells, it's just that they haven't developed yet.

It's like when you're a kid, you have all these friends. It's just so easy to have friends when you're a kid. You just have to be near someone and they're your friend. If a kid lives in your neighborhood and he's within a year of your age and he doesn't beat you up every time he sees you, then odds are pretty good that you're going to be friends.

You don't have to have anything in common, really. You could both just have on the same sweater or like the same flavor of Jell-O. This is why adults just throw kids together and are confident that they'll all have a good time. Or why your mom would say "I'm going to Mrs. Johnson's house today, she has a son who's your age, you can play with him while we plan the blah blah blah..." They know you're kids, you'll find something to do.

This same principle applies to "Best Friends", as well as just regular friends. When you're kids, everyone has to have a BEST friend. You were supposed to only have one, but I guess sometimes you could have a best NEIGHBORHOOD friend, and a best CHURCH friend, and a best SCHOOL friend. But everyone had a Best Friend and this was completely different from just being a friend. Your best friend was the one who knew all your secrets and got the homework for you when you were sick and knew what girls liked you.

Adults don't make friends the way kids do. Adults have small talk and awkward silences. Adults don't blurt out every detail of their personal lives the way kids do, and to them it's not as important what your favorite cartoon is.

But grown-ups do have friends. Mostly they have Grown-Up Friends who just do grown-up things and discuss grown-up subjects like THE PRESIDENT and INTEREST RATES. These are boring friends. Even when both of the grown-ups are fun and interesting people to be around, they're still bored.

Sometimes grown-ups have good friends, even BEST friends....and you know where they get them from? They're the same ones they knew when they were kids. This is why you sometimes see a state senator whose best friend is a car mechanic, or a professor whose best friend is a waiter.

Kids are like the cells that haven't specialized. They're all JUST KIDS. They all get along. There can be two kids who look and act and dress alike and hang out together and become Best Friends, and in 20 years one will be a preacher and one will own a biker bar. Maybe they'll still be friends and maybe they won't, but the point is that they COULD be. It's the same way when you see two embryonic cells that look the same and one may wind up a brain cell and one may wind up a mucous membrane lining the intestine. You just never know.

Now with adults, say you have a guy who sells insurance and goes to a Methodist church and follows hockey: Any new friends this guy ever makes will be insurance selling Methodist hockey fans (or some combination). That's because he's specialized already.

Just a thought.