If there’s an award for the video with the most “real best friend energy” this TikTok would undeniably be a strong contender. And, when we say “best friend,” we mean that ride or die, till death do us part, more-than-a-decade-old-long platonic soulmate connection no one can replace.
On Oct. 14, 2024, a woman named Jordan, whose handle is @jnchappell_, posted a one-minute TikTok in the typical Get Ready With Me-style, giving the context to a very special surprise she had planned for her best friend of 20 years. Jordan, who is from North Carolina, decided to travel around six hours to be with her long-distance bestie, Ashley, for her birthday weekend. Although Ashley had visited in the semi-recent past, Jordan hadn’t gone up to Pennsylvania, where Ashley lives, in about six years. “So, it’s definitely overdue for me to pay her a visit,” Jordan says in the video.
Jordan arrived at Ashley’s house around one in the morning and was let in by her husband. Right before Ashley’s alarm bell rang at five o’clock, and after her husband had already gone to work, Jordan hopped into bed with her. A pinned video on Jordan’s account depicts the hilarity that occurred when Ashley woke up to find someone she could not have expected lying right next to her.
A display of true, long-lasting friendship
If you too have got a long-distance friendship, the kind that no number of miles apart can ruin, you are sure to feel this TikTok on a spiritual level. These two best friends have been living hours away from each other for 12 out of their 20 years of friendship. Ashley tends to visit Jordan more regularly because she’s got family still residing in North Carolina, whereas Jordan, before the filming of this TikTok, hadn’t gone to Ashley since her wedding six years prior.
A few years ago, while living abroad, I was also surprised by my best friend and filmed by my roommate — his accomplice in the plan — when he knocked on my door one random evening while I was unsuspectingly cooking dinner. I can safely say that my brain stopped computing – you could almost hear the Microsoft Windows XP error sound effect — and it took a few perplexed seconds to reboot. But I, unlike Ashley in this case, had the benefit of being wide awake and not having to make sense of an improbable — albeit much welcomed — situation with a sleep-heavy brain.
“The best surprise of my life,” Ashley wrote under Jordan’s video retroactively explaining what to most people – if they happened to miss the context – would be a puzzling video. “Same and it wasn’t my surprise 😅❤️❤️,” Jordan replied.
Everyone should aspire to have a friendship like Ashley and Jordan’s. We are able to tell how deep this bond is by the way they share the kind of breathless, compulsive laughter that makes one’s tummy hurt — to the point that Jordan seems to exclaim, towards the end of the video, about how she’s about to lose control of her bladder. This kind of wholesome — and hilarious — videos remind us that, no matter the distance or the daily busyness of adult life, the love of a genuine friend is irreplaceable and can withstand every test that time may throw its way.