Friends

I consider myself extremely lucky. I have 4 good friends I would consider lifelong... we've known each other for over 20 years now and it's likely we'll be wheeling each other around when we're all in our 80s.

B.D. over here is our group comedian. Here he is holding the gift I gave him yesterday. It's a re-gift, my cousin had given it to me for a laugh and I passed it on for another laugh.

Hey!!! No naughty thoughts! It's a toilet paper dispenser!!! What did you think it's for?

Sometimes I hear conversations about friendship -- even my own mother had instances in the past where people she had thought were friends had suddenly let her down or had disappeared. So, yeah, true friendship is elusive.

I sometimes visit this huge online board called Offtopic.com. It's exactly what it sounds like...it has thousands of members on it talking about any subject you can possibly imagine. At any given time, there's always at least a few hundred people on this thing. Right now it's close to 10pm here....there's 1100 people reading Offtopic at this very moment. It's a shark tank...you can say something and a second later you'll have dozens of responses to it.

I started visiting this last year as my brother had recommended this one section called "Asylum" where you can post your troubles and usually you'll get good responses on it. Some responses are obviously from idiots, but there are some recurring posters who are incredibly inciteful. Because it's all anonymous...they won't hold back. If you're an idiot about something, they'll tell you! But in Asylum you'll get people who have gone through abortions, family deaths, relationship breakups, drug addictions, etc etc. Quite a lot of messed up people out there. But it's good free therapy hehe.

Anyway, a recurring subject is often how people had lost friends or they had friends betray them.

I had to think about that one. Ultimately, you can't place pressure on your friends. Like, if you're drowning in a sea of great white sharks, I'm not expecting my friends to jump in and save me. I think that's the jurisdiction of family members to lose life and limb for you.

Now if it happens where one of my best friends jumps in and tries a rescue in that situation, I would not be surprised either. But at that point it's just a bonus.

But what I'm trying to say is that I think friendships must come without expectations. I think that's ultimately how it's worked out for us.