How are you in the best friend department?
Tyrades! by Danny Tyree
“So, Dan – what are you doing tonight?”
After 40-plus years, I can still hear one of my best friends from college asking that dreaded question.
No matter how many homework assignments, romantic entanglements and writing deadlines occupied my plate, Jack would invariably cajole me into some series of nerdy antics.
I have felt guilty over the decades. Family responsibilities and work responsibilities (and let’s face it – channel-surfing responsibilities) ensured that (a) I drifted away from Jack after college and (b) I failed to visit him before his premature death.
(I’m not so overwrought about high school friends who escaped from my orbit. If they failed to “stay cool” and “always remember French class,” they voided the warranty!)
But, ironically enough, I see I have plenty of company in my isolation.
According to figures cited by the Wall Street Journal, 40 percent of Americans say they don’t have a best friend at all – up from 25 percent in 1990.
I understand competitor USA Today attributed this statistic to (a) spontaneous combustion from climate change and (b) white supremacists declaring, “I’m so supreme I don’t even need other white people, although I would like to borrow a skill saw, and the occasional six-pack would be appreciated”; but I’ll try to focus on my original source.
(Speaking of which, the Journal conveniently failed to quote anyone admitting, “After spending thirty bucks a week on the Journal, I don’t have any MONEY for tagging along to the @%^& gun-and-knife show!”)
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