Friends

Doesn't matter how old you get, one little fart and nobody can keep a straight face.

What is a friend?

A simple question on the surface, easy to answer. Facebook says that the average number of friends each of it’s more than 1.2 billion members has is 338. 

Wow. You are popular. If you have more than that you must be high-fiving people as you walk down the street, you’re so cool. If you have less than that I don’t know why you bother getting out of bed in the morning.

Can you detect the sarcasm? Good, you should. You don’t have 338 friends. I’m not saying that you don’t have any friends, but you certainly don’t have 338. Some of those people you haven’t seen for years and quite possibly some of them you have never met at all. Chances are you’ve got some, let’s call them contacts, that are linked to you because they know someone that you met once, they have a cool sounding name or you liked their profile picture when they sent a ‘friend’ request and you didn’t have the heart to tell them you had no idea who they were.

Don’t believe me? I can almost feel some of you shaking your head, insisting “well, I have that many friends, but I’m me and clearly I’m more popular than most.” News for you, no you don’t and no you’re not. 

Want to prove me wrong? Fine, I’ve got a little experiment for you: get someone else to select a name from your friend list that they’ve never heard before. Got it? Right, now find the mobile number for that person in your phone’s contact list. If you haven’t got it you’ve failed already - who doesn’t have their friend’s number? 

But, let’s say you do. Now, wait until 3am and call it, say you really need to borrow some money and could they come out now to pick you up, see what the reaction is. If you either couldn’t ever do that to that person, or if you could but know they would tell you to bugger off (in slightly more florid terms), then they are not your friend, not really.

A true friend would drop everything if you really needed them to, at any hour of the night, to make sure you were alright. They’d question it - any sane person would - but they would be more concerned with you being ok and helping you out before starting to throw expletives your way.

Still think every one of your 338 contacts is a friend? In that case, pack up the oceans, turn off the stars, you win the universe. Move along people, nothing more to see here. Chances are, though, that you’re now looking at your list and wondering how many people would actually do that for you. But you have to consider the flip-side, too: how many of them would you be prepared to do that for? Narrows the list quite considerably, doesn’t it?

The problem is it all comes down to your definition of the word friend; we become too blasé about throwing around certain words and they lose their power. Friend is one of these words*. A friend isn’t someone that you just having a passing nod with occasionally. It isn’t someone who used to bully you at school but now wants to share with you photos of their dinner every damn waking moment.

A friend is someone that you connect with on more than just an ‘interest’ level. You may have similar interests too, but it’s the recognition of a deeper shared ‘something’ that raises the relationship above others and means you’ll go that extra mile for each other. It may be your morality, a mutual experience or a sense of humour that perplexes everyone else, but it will be a constant. From the outside you may appear to be totally different and people may wonder why you are such firm friends, but you’ll both be aware of it, even if you can’t put your finger on exactly what it is.

A friend is someone that you don’t have to see every day to maintain a bond. You can get together at irregular intervals, sometimes years, and carry on as if the intervening time just hadn’t happened. There’s no awkwardness, just a comfortable familiarity. Sure, there’ll be lots to catch up on, but a true bond will make all that stuff purely incidental.

A friend is someone that knows without being told when is the best time to talk and when you really just need them to listen. They will know you well enough and respect you enough to be able to tell you, not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear.

A friend is someone that you can not speak to for months and then call them at 3 o’clock in the morning asking for help, knowing they will as best they can.

They will support you, stick up for you, fight for you and encourage you, and when you’re getting too big for your boots they will embarrass you and leave you with no illusions of exactly how important you really are.

They will do all of this and ask for nothing in return but your friendship. There is no score-keeping, no tit-for-tat, just the knowledge that somebody has got your back should you need it.

Don’t get me wrong, you won’t always see eye to eye. You’ll have disagreements, differences of opinion, possibly even arguments, but if you’re friends you won’t hold grudges. You’ll agree to disagree, smile, talk about each other behind your backs for a short while (don’t pretend you don’t) and move on.

You have many people in your life. You have relatives, mates, colleagues, acquaintances, lovers, partners. Some you will have known for years, others for a very short time. In the future you will meet more people. How many of them are or will be friends? How many will fade away as the years pass? Discounting the close relatives, how many of them would step up when you really needed them to?

So, how many friends do you really have? Think about it. You shouldn’t need to tell them or ask them. If they’re you’re friend you’ll already know.

Oh, and before you go, what was your number again? Keep your phone on tonight…

* Love is another. Seriously, if you think of having a McDonalds and agree with their tagline that you’re ‘loving it’, please stop reading now and seek professional help. Go on, we don’t need you here.