Friend

And friends abroad must bear in mind
Friends at home they leave behind.

----------------------------------A.E.Housman

It's been years. Years and years and years since I've been home, but still at night in my dreams I hear the calling and the laughter of my friends.

We are lying, exhausted, on the hood of Jeff's pale blue Chevrolet Cavalier wagon. Both of us are staring at the mottled blue-white sky, mouths open and gaping for breath. We have been throwing frisbees around the field behind the elementary school, sprinting through the last days of summer.
»I'm so damn thirsty. Let's go down to Sunnybrook and buy some soda.«
»Yeah, okay.«
Jeff is my best friend.

Jane is the woman whom I was trapped with in an elevator, which had stopped working all of a sudden. While waiting to be rescued, we told each other Gothic stories, which made us alternate between thrill and laughter. In the end, we had got to be friends. Laughter and imagination have been characteristics of our friendship down to the present day.

For a holiday, Mulvaney decided to go to Switzerland to fulfill a lifelong dream and climb the Matterhorn. He hired a guide and just as they neared the top, the men were caught in a snow slide.
Three hours later, a Saint Bernard plowed through to them, a keg of brandy tied under his chin.
»Hooray!« shouted the guide. »Here comes man's best friend!«
»Yeah,« said Mulvaney. »An' look at the size of the dog that's bringin' it!«

»Oh yes,« he replied, »my very well-known friend. He's to meet me here, coming up from Malvern, and I supposed he'd already have arrived. But he doesn't come till later, and I'm relieved not to have kept him. Do you know him?« Strether wound up.

I was once told that »a friend is someone who knows everything about you, and still wants to hang around with you.«
Friends give me undeniably good feelings.

A true friend remains a friend even when you don't deserve to have a friend.

True friends are rare and few. Treat them better than you would your most valued possessions.