I had this one friend, he was a really great guy. He trolled this one website all the time and it was fucking hilarious. Like, he brought all the trolls to the yard. Anyway, some members of the community thought it would be a great practical joke if they asked my friend to moderate a debate they were going to have. My friend, about halfway through, realized the joke being played on him, and so /he/ played a joke back and took and eternity to finish moderating, always promising that he was working on them, but they were really sitting in his trash folder, one absent-minded click away from being deleted altogether... We called him ThucThuc.

What a potentially lovely and heart-warming thread.

I'm a sociable guy and I reckon I have quite a lot of friends. My two closest friends in the world, who I will call R and V, have quite literally kept me alive this year with the warmth of their love. R is very good at pool. In fact the vast majority of my really good friends are female. I get on fine with guys, but with girls/women I can have really deep conversations that require a deep understanding of the other person. I have male friends too, mind you. I spent a great couple of hours this afternoon drinking, talking shite and generally wasting time in a good way with T, a former postman and general comedy character, and S, the singer of a local rockabilly outfit.

Unlike you, Thucy, nearly all the friends I have now are people who I've become friends with since becoming an adult, but that's partly because I moved to another part of the UK after finishing University. Few of them are very well off - I'm by far the highest earner in my circle of friends - but that couldn't be less important. What matters is that my friends are genuine people who are fun to spend time with. I love them all.

Some may consider this answer to be trite, but I consider it to be the exception…my best friend is my wife. She’s the only person that has always been there for me, even when I least deserved it. She games with me (PC, XBOX, board games), we share and talk about the books we’ve read, she reads my writings and encourages me to do more, we dream of the future together…she tolerates my webdip obsession…and she’s till smokin’ in a bikini! Of anyone I know, she is the person that would leave the largest hole in my life were she not there.

Jamie -- how's it going with the med situation? Hope all is well with you.

"Most of these high paid
MBAs from Harvard never make it.
You need a system, discipline, good
people, no deal junkies, no
toreadores, the deal flow burns
most people out by 35.
Give me PSHs -- poor, smart and
hungry. And no feelings. You don't
win 'em all, you don't love 'em
all, you keep on fighting, and if
you need a friend, get a dog."

-Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street"

Krellin... this may be one of the few times I can say that I unequivocally agree w/ you. =)

I'm far too guarded to really claim a lot of good friends (I don't say that is a good thing, but it works for me). I can probably say that I've only let 3-4 people over the course of my entire life truly get to know me and thus whom I can call 'best' friends. But I would say the same thing as you regarding my wife. I have a lot of solid acquaintances, and ones that I trust and I think reciprocate that feeling.. but few that know my deepest thoughts/feelings/etc.

Actually, Thucy... this would be a great idea to present to major newspapers... w/ all the shit you see in the paper, it would be great to see an entire section dedicated (if only once per year) for people to simply say thank you to their friends along w/ what makes them special. Yes, it's corny as all hell, but I would be willing to bet it would be met with a resounding positive response.

Krellin - I'm doing as well as can be expected, thanks. The love and support of the friends I mentioned has been crucial in keeping me going.

Haha damn look at that y'all Thucy posted the most positive thread of the year.

@Jamie

Yeah I have my (girl)friends as well. My relationship with them is always drastically different than the one with my old buddies from home. I don't know what that says.

Oh yeah and our group of 6 acquired a name somewhere over the years. We are referred to as "Team Batman." Don't ask me why lol.

Better then Team Jacob or Team Edward

All my friends are on WebDip

#teamthucy

#fuckghug

#imfriendswithscarlettjohannsen

#whoiskrellin

My God, there's really six of them?!?!?

I have (or should I say had) two really great friends. Both have passed, one from Manic/Depressive (i.e. biplar) suicide and the other from a heart attack brought on by the stress of living in a society where he wasn't welcome (being gay in Cincinnati is not conducive to one's mental and physical well being). I miss both dearly.

My few living friends are mostly former or current coworkers, some I've known for years and worked with off and on for much of that time. I sort of broke away from the high school crowd as most of them are country red necks who still smoke pot and drink all weekend long and think that country music is the greatest (gag me with with a spoon).

The coworker friends I have are all as twisted as I am (something about being a software developer will do that to you) and I share at least one interest with each of them, but not always the same one. M1 and I are both into music and woodworking and I got him reacquainted with the pipe. M2 and I both enjoys cigars and woodworking as well. M3 and I share a love of pets. J1 is my old boss who now works with me as a coworker and shares a love of gadgets. J2 is a cigar and pipe smoker as well. H and I... well she is my office wife. B and I are both into MMORPGs, especially WoW, STO, SW:TOR, and TSW.

@Oct - he only have 5 friends. He is the 6th man. When they play basketball, Thucy sits on the bench. They let him call himself coach. Just Kidding Thucthuc.

@Draug - I wasn't shocked by the fact that Thucy has friends, but by the fact that the world can contain 6 Thucy-like characters without imploding. You'll be telling me there's more than one person like Putin next!

Oh don't worry they're not like me in the way you're thinking. They're mostly all just run-of-the-mill twenty-something progressives. Not radical egalitarians like me or whatever. They also all have fairly normal career tracks unlike mine. But in personality we are alike.

"They let him call himself coach. Just Kidding Thucthuc."

Lol what's funny is that this is close to the truth. I'm usually the comic relief fall guy. I have no problem with that role lol.

My faith in the cosmic balance is restored :D!

Well, my best friend lives in Denver and I live in VA. When I lived in Denver we use to enjoy listening to music, getting drunk, playing pub trivia, chasing the ladies, etc. Fun was had by all.

My best friend who is not my wife came from a remote unincorporated part of far Northern California. There is no town; he says it is technically a "census area," a blip of population sufficiently large/dense that the census takes notice of it even though it does not coincide with any political boundaries. Gathering kids from within an hour's drive or so resulted in a high school class of twelve, which must have made dating hell. My friend graduated top of his class, and probably was the smartest person within 100 miles. Of course, there might only have been 1000 people in that range. In this isolated environment, he formed strong opinions about how the world worked, likely based too much on reading Ayn Rand and having no company for any intellectual discussions.

My friend brought those opinions to college, where I met him. We worked together at night, and spent countless hours talking about life and philosophy. We also hustled together at card games, either as a team playing Spades or individually playing Hearts (buck a point, losers pay to the winner in dollars the difference in scores). As it turns out, he taught me how to play Diplomacy when we once visited his parents' house on a break. I have always thought that he is the most honest person I know. He wasn't particularly good at Diplomacy, and eventually gave it up because he felt guilty from stabbing. If for some reason I had to have someone I know cross the country with a million dollars in cash, I would choose him and I would expect it to arrive safely.

My friend was my best man when I got married. We only live 15 minutes apart, but now that we each have families we tend to see each other only a few times a year.

@Krellin - I couldn't count how many times growing up my dad told me, "Marry your best friend. Your mom and I weren't best friends when we got married, and we had to learn how later. It's harder that way, so save youself some trouble." So when I noticed that M was my best friend, I quit chasing other girls and asked her out and never looked back. Sometimes it freaks me out how young we were, but hey, here we are twenty years later.

I have one friend that I get together with for the heavy intellectual stuff, and another friend that kicks my butt when I start to get whiney, and a college room-mate that I'm still very close with, and a couple of professional mentors who are actually more like an extra dad and big brother, and a number of couples we hang out with as families. And I've been having breakfast at the diner with my Dad once a week, and a lot of his friends come in and hang out with them - it's a bit weird but also pretty cool to get to know my dad's friends.