Friendship

The older I get, the less I care about the gender of my friends and the more I care about whether they possess more abstract qualities like loyalty, honesty, reliability, etc. I have more respect for the few friends who genuinely try to understand me and who have stood by me throughout many a crisis than I do the more lukewarm friends who don't try and haven't stood by me.

Indeed, I find myself regretting the many years when I did concern myself with my friends' genders.

Does this make me weird? Then okay, I'm weird.

But, as an old song once noted, there are times when it's okay to feel like a fifth wheel.

And quite frankly, we all have qualities that distinguish us from someone else's idea of the norm.

Besides, I'd rather have ten friends of the "wrong" gender who really "get" me and to whom I can really talk than a hundred so-called friends of the "right" gender who don't "get" me and who are not really interested in anything I have to say.