True Friends

I've got a question for you. It goes to the heart of why I love the internet. Who is a truer friend? Is it my next door neighbor, who is a retired cop that voted for Bush twice and goes to church every Sunday? His daughter babysits my kids. He watches my house when I'm away and let's me borrow his lawnmower when mines busted. He's a great neighbor (we'll forget for the moment that he's a Yankees fan, which used to be the ultimate sin). We remain good neighbors by avoiding our politics. As it has always been, so shall it always be.

Or is it the person on the other coast, whom I've never met? The one who spills his/her gut in a blog every day. The one that makes me say, "Right on, Sister! Go yell it on the Mountain!" The one I will never meet and have a cold beer with, but with whom I toke on the bong of truth everyday. I'm not going to call her when my car breaks down, but I'll read her when my spirit breaks down.

They say a broken clock is right twice a day. My dad had a couple of gems in my youth. He bought a wood-splitter (how many weekends did I spend splitting wood...) and he asked my uncle(who would eventually lose two fingers to the aforementioned tool) what he thought of it. My uncle said that machines break down, to which my dad replied "So do men. Get me another beer, son."