What is a true friend

They say that if you can count all your friends on one hand, you are lucky.

I have used up all my fingers and am almost out of toes, so I guess I am super lucky.

But, so are they. I am a true friend. I am the one that at three in the morning will come and get you at a bar when you have too much to drink. I will dash through the rain to get you when your tire gets a flat. I will keep your secrets, even when you are no longer my friend.

What? That’s right, if you tell me something at a moment when we WERE friends and the condition of that transfer was based on friendship, it remains frozen in that promise for life.

I bring this discussion forward because of the overload of “tell all” books that are being sold. I really feel like it is treasured private information. I am not a person that slows down at traffic accidents or lurks into people windows of their homes. I never glance at open doors in the hallways at hotels. I value privacy. Mine, theirs, yours and ours.

I can’t even read magazines anymore. I haven’t picked up one in several months. I carry a book with me at all times. My secret device against gossip, it protects me.

I think what saddens me the most is that those people trusted this information with someone and they got burned. I wonder if they will ever be able to disclose or share themselves again, knowing that someone will pay big money for a piece of their “human?”

Don’t we all sort through our “stuff” with our friends?

I have a rule of thumb that I use when picking friends “if they will do it with you, they will do it to you” which means if I hear them gossiping about anyone else, they are immediately taken out of the “potential friends column” and placed in the “casual acquaintance” column.

How do you know when you have a true friend?