Would you bail me out of jail?

I recently had a conversation with my coworkers about Facebook, and mentioned that I had over 400 friends listed on my network. Although a lot of these people are those that I don’t even talk to, but significant from my past, my coworkers couldn’t believe that I would bother being “FB Friends” with so many…

…from which stemmed a lovely conversation about what a “real” friend is, and how many you really have that you can call more than an acquaintance. The Facebook Coolness Factor seems to be to have as many friends as possible, when really you could only stand to see 4-5 of them on a daily basis. My coworkers say that in fact, they can think of 1 or 2 that they would really count on. “What does ‘really counting on them’ mean?” I ask.

To which Kevin replied, “My best friend is a guy who I know would lend me a significant sum of money, no questions asked, if I asked him to lend it to me. Or he’d be the guy that I would use my one, single phone call from jail from cause I know he’d drop everything and come bail me out.”

That got me thinking… sure enough, although I have all these FBFs, I can only count on one hand the number of people that would do that for me. This has become my measuring stick in the past couple of weeks, so much so that I have started to care for those suckers that would do that for me more than those I realized wouldn’t. These are the girls/guys that will most probably get me outta that inevitably bad relationship, or tell me I have something in my teeth… both incredibly necessary and difficult to do.

Point being, I hope that everyone realizes who those friends are (and hopefully you haven’t been a jerk your whole life and can name someone other than your parents) and treat them like gold - I know I am.