Together with a group of colleagues from work I attended last Friday a farewell lunch for JL who's just retiring at the end of the month. At dessert time there came the inevitable speech which contained little new information the celebrated JL hadn't talked about before in many a prior lunch. A significant news was perhaps his passing comment about the place he feels he belongs to. Despite he was born somewhere else he said he is firmly convinced he belongs to the town where he spent his high school years, the rationale behind his remark being that his lifetime lasting friends were all made then and there. I couldn't help pondering if this was also my case, regarding the endurance and associated origin of those friends of mine which have made it all the way to this day. Nowadays I have only acquaintances (a decent number of them if you ask me) and very few friends, of whom only about three remain from teenage-dom. One does not properly "remain", he sadly passed away some years ago yet he's survived to still being a close friend, with another one I have almost lost all contact, and with the third one most likely I would have also lost contact had e-mail and internet not intervened. What I may conclude from this succinct account is that while JL's educated guess may fit him nicely and may even be a broad trend it does not seem so appropriate in my case, being friendship such an elusive notion to me.
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