What is a friend?
 

We have friends from all walks of life. Some seem to understand our very soul. Some are just fun to hang out with.

A friend will help you move, a good friend will help you move the body.

Friends are flowers in the garden of life.

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.

I have all the friends I need right now, but if anyone dies I'll call you.

OK, some of the tripe is out of the way.

What IS a friend? I think a friend loves you no matter what you do. I don't think a friend enables behaviors that hurt you. A friend will tell you what you don't want to hear. A friend will risk that, because a friend loves you and wants what is best for you.

An acquaintance will typically not get involved. An acquaintance will coo at all the right times. An acquaintance is fun to go to a movie with, or have a drink with. One does not expect an acquaintance to delve into your very soul looking for all your faults and finer points; if they do, they may indeed become a friend.

You will have fallouts with friends that you will patch up. You will have fallouts with acquaintances where you may or may not patch things up.

A friend tells you when you have a booger hanging out of your nose. A friend will fall into the watery ditch with you so that you don't have to tell the track coach you peed your pants on the five mile road run, instead 'we both went into the ditch' (true story, JrHi, I was the friend.)

An acquaintance will be slightly embarrassed by you if you fart in public. An acquaintance may do your hair and your make-up for you, but it never looks as good as when your friend does, because your friend knows 'you.'

A friend loves you when you can't get out of bed for three days and you stink. A friend will drag you to the shower to get you moving. A friend will figuratively bash you upside the head with tough love and tell you to get your shit together. Because a friend loves you. A friend wants what is best for you.

Rare and brilliant, a real friend is hard to find, but not hard to hold. A friend will knock the crap out of that wall you've built. Persistently, not always gently, sometimes to your greatest annoyance. Acquaintances, bless them, are easy to find but harder to hold...but that's OK. Acquaintances might get sick of your crap and walk away, and that's OK too.

I am lucky to have some lovely acquaintances, a few amazing cow orkers, a wonderful family, and a handful of the best friends I could ever ask for.

a tourmaline, an amethyst, a few rubies (one even on Tuesday!) a diamond, an aquamarine, a tanzanite, an opal, and some hammered silver shimmering like stars. The hammer was Thor's not Jack's. :)

eta: actually, with this particular bunch, the hammer was BOTH Thor's and Jack's!

A friend is someone who notices odd behaviour and asks you about it before judging.
A friend is someone who remembers your shared history and doesn't assume you must be in the wrong.
A friend sticks by for a while because everybody hurts, sometimes.

Okay, Michael Stipe gave me the last line.

are you even paying attention to me Sundae?????

A friend is many things. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them provide the honesty you need, when you need it. Others provide the salve you need when you need it, and still others are ready to whisk you off to a nightclub to get leathered when you get dumped.

Some are all of the above. And some are some of the above.

Sometimes a friend is just someone with enough shared history to know the song and care about the ending.

Sometimes they're just a fellow traveller for a portion of the journey. I've had friendships that ran deep but lasted a short time before life took us in different directions. And others who have remained friends for years, without ever really sharing anything of value except a little time and commonality.

Some friendships run deep and are also long lasting.

(I wonder what the Willises be talkin' 'bout in my musings on my friends?)

Dana, love it. I wanna be your friend 'cause I need whisked off to the nightclub, fer sure! :)

MOAR QUOTES fer frenz:

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
― C.S. Lewis

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Silence make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts.”
― Margaret Lee Runbeck

No.
Because you are not my friend.
Not now not ever.
























Of course I don't mean it,
Here.

but- the hair loss? I guess I need to brush up on my liver A&P.


sheesh.

I'm not drinking either, Sundae. I DID have a whopper a week back. a WHOPPPER. a fifth a day for four days. Quit. I never give up and I know you won't either. As long as I can I'll keep getting back up.

XO

Imma drink my face off tonight. Oh crud I am here until 7.

Remember darling, you got The Liver of the Gods.
I just got the whole gamut of symptoms.

Serves me right for being so smug in my late 20s-early 30s.

Meant for Bri but counts for both of you!

My liver's gonna pop out of my arse one day. I treat it like crap.

There was a show, where there was a song...my friend used to sing it. Something about "I've got a liver the size of a coconut..."

Anyone remember that? A cartoon with Jon Lovitz, maybe?

All I know is the old East End ditty, "I got a luvverly buncha coconuts.."
I know a lot of them.
Some more potent than others - Grandad used to sing this to us (being fairly innocuous)

Merv Griffin's version.
Blimey he sounds posh!

My favourite went:

All of a sudden
A dirty great pudding
Went flying through the air
Aimed at my brother
It hit my poor mother
And knocked her off the chair

Now

Ain't it a pity
She's only one titty to bash against the wall...?

Was possibly a parody or a rude song to a common tune.
In later years it reminded me of the songs the proles sang in 1984. I can't help but wonder if Orwell based them on those.

ETA - Added second song before I read IM's reply.

Yeah, it was a take on that song. I just can't remember where exactly the spoof came from. No time to look I'm with students. It would have been early 90s probably.

I've been having trouble with this since someone I considered a friend, with whom I share a forty year history, sometimes inseparable, sometimes more distant, sometimes like sisters, sometimes hurting each other, moved away about six months ago without telling me. I don't know where she is for the first time in forty years and it hurts like hell.

Sent by thought transference.