friends

 I am part of an adult class that meets every Sunday morning at our church at 10:00am.  We use a nationally available program called Wired Word which provides us with a choice of two topics to use each Sunday, all based on current events or interesting news stories.  Today was my turn to lead the discussion and I chose the topic of Friendship (how the numbers of close friends that people say they have are declining, what makes a friend, etc.)  Each class begins with a brief introduction to the topic which has also been emailed to each member.  After the intro a few questions are asked and we are off and running.  This morning was no exception.  Classmates talked about lifelong friends, making new friends and the various levels of friendship - work friends, church friends, lifelong friends and so on.  Everyone had something to say, which isn't always the case.  In among the more or less expected responses we heard a couple that I wasn't expecting.  One lady told about a work "friend" who turned out to be a back stabbing enemy.  Another spoke about a fellow teacher she thought was funny and really admired and thought of as a friend until she realized that this person liked to play nasty tricks on her students and fellow teachers and that this tendency seemed to be escalating.  Not the kind of person you want for a friend.  One gentleman made it pretty clear that he would never trust any woman to be his friend.  Yikes, not sure what happened there.  All in all it was a really good discussion that made me think about and appreciate the good friends I have, none of whom are back stabbing tricksters as far as I know.  One thing no one mentioned was thinking of your spouse as a friend.  In my case my wonder spouse was a friend long before he became my husband which may be an unusual circumstance but it works for us.  Let's hear it for friendship.