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FRIENDS

(After “Friends, Good Friends – and Such Good Friends”,
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by Judith Viorst)

…Friendships are conducted at too much; we maintain our public
many levels of intensity, serve many face and emotional distance…
different functions, meet different 2.Special-interest friends.
needs and range from …those as all- These friendships aren’t intimate.
the-way as the friendship of the soul Their value lies in some interest
sisters … to that of the most jointly shared. And so we may have
nonchalant and casual playmates. an office friend or a yoga friend or a
Consider these varieties of tennis friend…
friendship: My playmate is a shopping
1.Convenience friends. These friend, a woman of marvelous taste,
are the women with whom, if our a woman who knows exactly where
paths weren’t crossing all the time, to buy what, and furthermore is a
we’d have no particular reason to be woman who always knows beyond a
friends: a next-door neighbor, a doubt what one ought to be buying.
woman in our car pool or the mother And since I care a lot about eye-
of one of our children’s closest shadow … and shoes I’m very glad
friends. to have a shopping friend.
Convenience friends are 3.Historical friends. We all have
convenient friends. They’ll lend us a friend who knew us … maybe
their cups and silverware for a back in our second grade…
party… They’ll take us to pick up The years have gone by and
our car when we need a lift to the we’ve gone separate ways and
garage. They’ll even take our cats we’ve little in common now, but
when we go on vacation. As we will we’re still an intimate part of each
for them. other’s past.
But we don’t, with convenience …What this friend means to me
friends, ever come too close or tell and what I mean to her…is having a
sister without sibling rivalry. We

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Текст друкується за виданням Judith Viorst. Friends, Good Friends – and
Such Good Friends. Redbook, October 1977. Abridged and adapted.

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