Almost every night before we fall asleep, I whisper to Joey, “Are we best friends?”

He always whispers back, “Of course we are!”

And I reply (in a stage whisper, of course), “YESSSS!”

So I was thinking about that while we were trying to fight through the insane shoppers at Central Market today (aside: if you have made the mistake of going to Central Market on a Saturday you know what I’m talking about; usually we are smart and go on Friday but we were otherwise engaged last night, and more on that later.)  Shopping at Central Market on a Saturday is kind of like riding a mechanical bull that turns into a live raging monster halfway through before your turn runs out, and bucks you so bad you get whiplash before you even realize what happened.

Or it could also be compared to one of those schools of fish like is on the Freshwater Planet Earth DVD; everyone moves in the same direction at a constant speed, and if you forgot the red onion just ten feet back there?  TOO BAD SO SAD, HONEY.  The fish are traveling this way so move or be ran over.

It was in this environment that I was pondering the best friend/spouse aspect of Joey’s and my relationship this morning.  Right by the strawberries.  I made the mistake of thinking, and it caused me to pause the jam up the flow of traffic.  So when I finally found Joey again (thank heaven for cell phones) he was all, where have you been anyway?

“You know how we’re best friends?” I asked him.

“Yeah….” he said, absently, because he was trying not to get run over by a stray cart.

“Well, I think if you’re married to your best friend, it teaches you how to be better friends with other people.”

Joey whipped his head around and said, “Why are you thinking about this in the grocery store?”

“I can’t control how my brain thinks and it thought about it here.”  (Which is totally true, I tend to go from pondering profound things to destroying all the aisles in Home Depot in my imagination and then telling Joey how it looked when everything came falling down.  It is amazing to have my brain.)

I went on to explain to Joey, in between dodging crazed grocery shoppers, that being married and being best friends is the best thing that has ever happened to me because it has taught me that just because I don’t like someone once in awhile doesn’t mean our relationship has to be over.  It can grow on a much deeper level once we work through our differences.

So then Joey looked at me sideways and asked, “Um, is this your way of telling me you’re mad at me or something?”

“Pssssh, NO,” I scoffed.  ”I was just thinking about it.”  (Like I said, I have a crazy brain.  I cannot control or comprehend it.)

Being best friends is also the most important thing about being married, I think.  Because it forces us to deal with stuff when it comes up.  It makes us iron out the winkles.  We have to go deeper.

I love Joey lots.  And since he’s my best friend?  I even like to drive him crazy once in awhile.  That’s why, when we got to Target, I made my Vibrams slap as loudly as they could against the ground while we walked, just to see if he would tell me to cut it out because I was making such an annoying noise.

It didn’t work, which was so much lamer than I was expecting it would be.

I had to keep it up for so long that my feet started to hurt from stomping, and finally Joey looked down at me and asked, “Are your feet hurting yet?”

So I wilted and said, “Yes.  I was trying to drive you crazy.”

“I’m too smart for you,” was all he said, and he said it so smugly, too.  ”I knew you were trying that but I didn’t want to give you the victory.”

(He is too smart for me.  Which…which makes me wonder why in the world he married me after all.)

I really love being best friends with my Joey.

He makes going grocery shopping one of the most fun things we do every week.