The 19 kinds of friends

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The Ex-Friend: Don’t ask, but if you do, the answer may well involve money or sex. Or both.

The Scary Friend: Someone who never fails to nudge you out of your comfort zone—way out. Scary does not mean quirky. If a friend likes to spend his weekends re-enacting Civil War battles in period dress, that’s quirky. If he shows up at your door in uniform late on a weeknight, that’s scary.

The Boss Friend: A person higher on the org chart who thinks your brittle smile and the startled look in your eye is an invitation to further terrorize you outside the workplace. One reason golf is popular in the business world is that it gives underlings a way to pal around with their superiors and still stay 30 yards apart.

The Train or Bus Friend: A person who apparently shares your unquenchable interest in the weather and the fortunes of the local ball team.

The Confidant: Someone who wheedles more out of you than you planned to share. Sadly, many confidants are also talented gossips who will soon be bartering your deepest secrets for someone else’s.

The Single-Modifier Friend: Any companion you proudly describe, if only to yourself, with one word: for instance, "my gay friend" if you happen to be straight, and vice versa. You can train yourself out of the habit by slowly adding modifiers, as in "my neat gay friend" or, with practice, "my socially inept and secretly homophobic straight friend with a godawfully bad haircut."

The E-mail Friend: A digital update on the kind of letter-writing friendships that thrived in the era between the invention of ink and the arrival of cable. If the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan claimed, then the message of most e-mail friendships is goofing off at work.

The Special-Interest Friend: Group friendships form around a shared passion—for soccer, French cooking, sky-diving. Special-interest friends often go by nicknames, usually be-cause they don’t know real names or anything else about each other be-yond their common interest. Which can create problems. If you run into your softball team’s home run leader in the courthouse, it’s probably not a good idea to shout "Hey, Killer!" You might influence the jury.

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