Friends are a very important part of a person’s life, and those who have good friends (which is considerably different than acquaintances or casual friends) are fortunate indeed. Friends can come from many different places, sometimes totally unexpectedly.

Many people keep several friends their entire life that they first befriended when they were children or in high school and college. I admit that I never made any real friends at those times in my life, so I have not known anybody nearly that long. I made my first good friend in graduate school, and we stayed friendly for twenty years before circumstances caused us to drift apart.

The workplace is another typical source of friends. When I started working, I made several friends at my first school, one of whom eventually became my wife, and another whom she and I have stayed friendly with ever since (although, sadly, we have not seen them nearly as much in recent years as we did for the first 20 years).

I have made friends at my recent school as well, but since I never socialize with them out of school, it remains to be seen if I will stay friendly with any of them, or even in touch at all.

Hobbies are a potential source of friends as well. Since I have been involved in amateur publishing for 40 years now (and how does that statement age me?), I have made many acquaintances that way. If I had traveled to science fiction conventions with any regularity during those years, some of those acquaintances might have been real friends, but when your sole contact with somebody is occasional emails or exchanged magazines, that hardly constitutes a true friendship. Still they are people whom I am fortunate to know and, perhaps, I will start attending a few cons after retirement, so that I can actually meet some of them.

Another common source of friends is neighbors and your children’s parents. We have actually made several friends this way, including the couple who are probably our very closest friends, and with whom we hope to spend even more time after we retire next summer.

Which leaves the most unlikely source of friends, former students. I stay in contact with several of them, and consider myself lucky to do so. But there are a small group whose contact goes beyond being acquaintances and into friendship. One of them ranks right with the couple I mentioned in the previous paragraph as a close friend. And this does not include the one who, for all purposes, has become one of my family.

As a child, I never realized how fulfilling it could be to have close friends, and I hope my current group of friends never drift away.