FriendsI remember when I was young my father told me that if you have five 'real' friends your entire life you're lucky. Like many things that he's conveyed to me over the years, that seems to be true as well. I have dozens of people that I'm friendly with but only a small handful that I count as friends in the strict sense of the word. On a side note, this seems to be a point where the English language fails us, as there seems to be no words to connote the degree of 'friendship' between two people. I wonder what that says about out society as the Eskimos have dozens of words for 'snow', but I'm off track here.
I attribute my selectiveness of friends to the fact that, like my father, I'm terribly introverted. I tell people that I'm a pathological introvert, and really don't like people at all. You get some funny looks at that. Many interpret 'quiet and withdrawn' as 'deep and thoughtful', little do they suspect. Being an ex-military officer seems to be incongruent with being withdrawn, but I found that you can get along quite well by acting the part of an extroverted, center-of-attention kind of guy. I wonder how many great leaders of the world were really just acting the part, and would really have preferred to hide from the spot lights and go read a book?
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