Friendship

I got an email today from a long-time friend who I hadn't heard from for a number of months. I think the reason she hadn't written for a while is because she was embarassed about some issue that had cropped up between us a while back. She shouldn't have been, of course.

It got me thinking about what a friend of her category would have to do to completely ruin the friendship:

• Abuse physical, mental, sexual, etc against my children;
• Same sort of stuff against my girlfriend;
• Actions threatening relationship with my children or girlfriend;
• Genocide — well actually, I probably wouldn't be friends in the first place if I detected a tendency towards this;
• Voting for George W. Bush — pretty safe ground here as I have few friends in the United States.

Lots of other stuff could be here but we'd just be getting silly. I mean, you don't choose to be friends with someone if you think they are going to end up firing at random people with a high-powered rifle from an elevated position. Do you?

What happens when someone that you place in lifelong-friend category changes does go postal? Wow. That's pretty heavy. But luckily, I've just (in my head) gone through them all and I'm pretty safe.

I think.