Ever since I was a child my mother raised me to recognize various kinds of friends. Friends are those who inspire us in every circumstance of life. There are three different kinds of friends in this life. I classify them according to how well I know and how well they know me. We encounter each of them everyday in school, college, home or at play.

However, we rarely spend much time actually thinking about and classifying these people. First, there are the “pest friends”, i.e. general acquaintances, next there are “guest friends” and our true friends.

The first type of friend is simply an acquaintance or someone we know. This means that you basically only know their name. We might not even remember what they look like. Usually, you meet these types of friends in college, at work, on the bus or anywhere else you might be.

We normally would not mind having a cup of coffee with them, but if something else came up we usually would have no problem parting company. We normally don’t miss them when they are elsewhere.

It is also this type of friend who gives us much irritation. Since most of the time we are kept in position where we have to act in a friendly way, such as at college or at work, we would not normally ask a friend when he is doing something annoying, such as tapping the fingers on a table or chewing gum loudly.

This is why I call them “pest friends”.

The second category of friends I call “social partners”; this is because they are closer than acquaintances, but nowhere near as close as a friend. Social partners are usually acquaintances who transfigure into “guest friends” through increased general chatting tendency. We know their name, a little of their family history and usually have several things in common.

Regardless, guest friends are toys to keep the topic of conversation jolly.  They would not open up to us how they are really felling. They are still preoccupied with saving face. We still do enjoy hanging out with them but when the going gets tough they are not there.

The last type of friend is the “best friend”. Generally, we know them the longest. We probably grew up together as children.

He or she knows everything about us and we do know them too. We share our deepest feeling or thoughts with them. A true friend will see you through when others see that you are through. They are not perfect, but  they are always concerned about us and never do anything deliberately to hurt us.