1. If Simone Biles were your best friend, if you ever got upset she would offer to do a mind-blowing tumbling pass across your house, and you'd tearfully whisper "yes please", and she'd do it and you’d feel much better.
2. If Simone Biles were your best friend, you would always be the first to like her tweets, Instagrams, and Facebook statuses.
3. If Simone Biles were your best friend, she would never forget your birthday, even if she was super busy traveling and training. Each year as a present, she would create a new tumbling pass and name it after you. She would be the only gymnast in the world capable of performing it.
4. If Simone Biles were your best friend, she would teach you how to do perfect glittery eyeliner.
5. If Simone Biles were your best friend, every now and then you’d feel a little inadequate, but then she would ask you to reach some cereal up on a high shelf for her, and you’d feel so useful, even though you’d suspect she could do a backflip and reach it herself if she really wanted.
6. If Simone Biles were your best friend, sometimes you would sleep over at her house and stay up late watching Zac Efron movies, and she would just sigh every now and then and say, “I just love him so much,” and you’d reply, “I know, Simone, me too,” even though you secretly weren’t that into him.
7. If Simone Biles were your best friend, she would let you come watch her train and it would never get boring, both because she’s incredible to watch, but also because her gym has one of those foam pits that you could do cannonballs into over and over again.
8. If Simone Biles were your best friend, she would introduce you to the other athletes in the Olympic Village, but only after she was done with all her events. “OK,” she’d say, five gold medals around her neck. “Now let’s focus on getting you a diver boyfriend.”
9. If Simone Biles were your best friend, you’d have a secret handshake that involved her doing a ton of impressive flips and twists and twirls around you while you just danced weirdly in the middle of it all, laughing.
10. If Simone Biles were your best friend, she would teach you how to do a really solid cartwheel.
11. If Simone Biles were your best friend, watching her compete would be 1000% more stressful than it already is, even though you know there’s never any reason to be nervous.
12. If Simone Biles were your best friend, only you would know who her second-place crush was, after Zac Efron.
13. If Simone Biles were your best friend, sometimes you’d be going about your day and just stop and think to yourself, My best friend is a once-in-a-generation talent who outstrips every other competitor by margins unprecedented in her sport.
14. If Simone Biles were your best friend, you'd sometimes daydream about dramatic situations in which she might rescue you from terrible danger due to her ability to swing between bars of different heights or balance well on a long, thin plank.
15. If Simone Biles were your best friend, you would go shopping together and she would dodge the crowds and grab sale items for you with a series of elegant, precise leaps.
16. If Simone Biles were your best friend, you’d both dress up as Simone Biles for Halloween, and she’d let you borrow some of her actual gold medals.
17. If anybody ever underestimated you, you would only have to say “Simone Biles is my best friend,” and they would see the error of their ways, because they would understand that Simone Biles wouldn’t be best friends with just anybody.
18. If Simone Biles were your best friend, she’d lend you her old sparkly leotards to pair with miniskirts for nights out on the town.
19. If Simone Biles were your best friend, she would never be weird about signing autographs for your family, because she’d know how much it meant to your little cousins and nieces and nephews to be inspired to follow their dreams just like she did.
20. If Simone Biles were your best friend, you would send her little care packages wherever she was competing in the world if you couldn’t make it in person.
21. If Simone Biles were your best friend, you would have a 100-day Snapchat streak.
22. And you would constantly send each other snaps with really embarrassing, unflattering selfies.
23. If Simone Biles were your best friend, you would get irrationally angry at judges for not giving her perfect scores every single time, and she would have to explain to you after meets why that wasn’t reasonable and she thought the judges had been perfectly fair.
24. If Simone Biles were your best friend, you'd take road trips together and have to pull over every two hours to stretch your legs. You would just have a little walk, and Simone would do a couple laid-out double Arabians.
25. If Simone Biles were your best friend, you'd sometimes say to her, "Hey Simone, wanna go do some cartwheels in the park?" and she'd give you a look and shake her head a bit and quietly say, "No. Not today..." and you'd get a bit worried, but then she'd say, "HA! JUST JOKING! Of course I want to go and do cartwheels in the park!" and you'd both laugh and laugh and laugh.
26. If Simone Biles were your best friend, every time she won anything, you would burst into tears, no matter what. You’d just be so proud of how hard she’s worked. She deserves it so much.
27. If Simone Biles were your best friend, someday your daughter would name her daughter Simone, and she would grow up to be an astronaut.
28. And then your granddaughter’s daughter, also called Simone, would be the first ever Space Gymnast.
29. If Simone Biles were your best friend, sometimes you'd just be out walking in the park on a lovely summer's day, and you'd be so happy that you’d start skipping merrily, and then Simone would suddenly somersault away rotating 720 degrees in midair before nailing the landing, then look round awkwardly, a goofy expression of guilt on her face. "Oh god, sorry," she would say, "Sometimes that just sort of happens."