Friend…Amiga…Amigo…Ami

Without friends what kind of world would we live in?  No birthday parties, no shoulder to cry on, not having a good laugh just from looking at each other and understanding the joke without saying one word…and so on.

When God decided on the hierarchy of the human chain, friends was #1, numero uno, the top banana.  I cannot imagine my world without my friends.  Of course, there are degrees of friendship.  That’s why they invented the totem pole.  Closest friend, close friends, friends, acquaintances, then your family.  But on the family heritage thing, we didn’t have a say on who we were going to inherit as a brother, sister, mama and papa.  The dice were rolled somewhere and somehow, and then puff!  here I am and there they are.  But friends, you get to choose.

Some of my “amigas” on this high school photo were questionable friends.  We were civil to each other so we knew what was going on with former boyfriends.  You know how it is sometimes.  Kisses kisses, hugging hugging and then, give me the scoop.  What’s up with my former imbecile boyfriend?  You both are doing just marvelous?  How nice! (the idiot).  Those kind of friendships are necessary and Machiavellian.  End justifies the means.  The need to know.

Then…you have the sort of friends by default.  You live together with 50+ women because that’s the only way your parents are going to allow you to continue your education, living with the nuns and all these women.  Lots of fun, like the night a thief was trying to make the rounds and we saw the nuns without their head coverage, and we didn’t know who was the scariest, the thief or the nuns.  Have mercy on my soul.

And then of course, you have the silent and always there friends…my books.  I don’t know what I would have done without them when going through the many changes I have been facing for the past three years.  Well, to be factual, since early 1970’s.  My self-improvement books are my wisdom provider when my human friends are not available or I just do not want to bother them with my sorrows.  My books are it.

I thought this was a pretty, innocent picture to end my homage to friends, friendship and what they all mean in our lives.

I feel tremendously blessed to have the friends I have, all and each one of them and because of them, I am a much better and special person.

Thank you for being my friend!

So it was today…See you next Monday.  Go Duke!

Your Happy Contessa

“The comfort of having a friend may be taken away, but not that of having had one.” Seneca, Roman philosopher