What It Takes To Be a Friend.

When it comes to making friends, I am quite selective; I don't just make friends with anyone. I had a childhood experience of a bad friendship, and even since then, I have been so cautious with whom I make friends.

There is the saying that “show me your friend and I'll tell who you are”. So this has given a lot of meaning to what friends are all about. There is actually a lot of impact that comes from who we decide to walk with, someone we decide to spend most of our time with.

While I was much younger and in my early elementary school days, I had a classmate who was a friend of mine. We were seatmates and I really liked him. Most times we read together and play together too. I never knew much about him apart from our times together in the school premises and after that, till the next day at school.

One day, Lanre came to school with a lot of goodies in his bag. As his playmate, he showed them to me, and I felt surprised that I had to challenge him on where he got the money to buy all those things. I hardly saw him bring such things to school before.

He smiled and told me his dad had just returned from London, and he bought him all those goodies and even gave him money. I saw him bring about some new notes from his pocket. Oooh. Seriously, my mind wasn’t free, but another part of me believed his story.

I still tried to be careful of how I spent his money and all he bought with it. Then, on our way home, he gave me a part of it, which I honestly took home to my parents. Then, after I got home, I knew what the true story was all about after I was almost beaten to death. We went back to his parents' house to find out that he had stolen the money from his dad's savings.

So, since then, I have known what friendship meant and have always been careful with making one.

As for me, I don’t really discriminate between friendships, maybe by religion or status, I don’t care about your background, maybe you are rich or poor, I don’t care about your stature or appearance. All I care about is the fact that you have a good character, then we are good to go.

I have made friends with a few people from my university days, and I can say that all of them are still on good terms with me to date. While I was in the university, two of my closest friends were not of similar religious beliefs as mine, but that wasn’t a barrier to our friendship, and I never regretted being friends with them.

When it comes to making friends online, too, I am no different; all I care about is your attitude and character. So far, you are good, so there is no reason why we should have problems as friends. A lot of my friends online I have not met in person, but I can say our bond is just as strong as anything. And that’s what I can call true friendship.

This is my response to the HIVE LEARNERS weekly prompt in the hive-learners community for the Week 184 Edition 3, and the topic to be discussed is FRIENDSHIP.