I think a good recipe is:
- Constant friends: not necessarily highly intelligent or gifted, but kind people who you get along with and can have fun with
- Friends who you hang out with once in a while for a deep, engaging, intellectual discussion: the person the original post was about
- And if you find a friend who belongs in both categories: they'll probably be your "best friend"!
Well, my best friend of 20 years managed to graduate high school without a functional literacy level, so while he was smart enough to work the system to graduate anyway, he's not exactly the person I go to for intellectual conversation. So naturally, this framework isn't what works for me. What we have in common is an outrageous sense of humor. There's a lot of laughing whenever we're around each other. And on the empathy/honesty/loyalty chart, he's off the scale. If I was in trouble and it was in any way possible for him to help me out, he'd be there.
I've been friends with his wife even longer, and I was instrumental in bringing the two together in the first place. She's more on my level intellectually... she was in all the AP classes with me, though she did get mad about how easy I made it look. When we're together, an inevitable topic is, "What are you reading?" Humor wise, not so much. When her DH and I are doing what we do, chances are 50/50 she'll either be amused or annoyed, and it's almost guaranteed that she won't be joining in. Back in our school days, her attempts at humor that we found funny were so rare that whenever we truly laughed at something she said, her DH would go, "Huhhh... G made a funny!", which would then be even funnier to us than whatever she'd just said. Like her husband, her empathy/honesty/loyalty factor is off the scale. She is highly selective of who she befriends, but once you're her friend, you're in it for life. If ever I want to know what's going on with our far-flung group from our school days, I only need to call her.
So by now, you've spotted the common theme. The empathy/honesty/loyalty factor is a mandatory third category for me. Once that threshold has been met, I'll take fun, intellectual peerness, or any happy blending of the two.
