The world is treacherous, my darlings, and if some ambitious person were to interview everyone who ever knew you for 10 minutes or more and offered them anonymity, he could paint a bleak picture of you that you wouldn’t recognise. There’s a lot of gossip and envy and animosity out there, don’t kid yourself, so all the more reason to hold fast to your friends. These people are crucial. In high school I wanted to hang out with cool people, but coolness evaporates in your 20s or whenever you beget children, and eventually you come to know who your friends are. They’re people who share a secret language with you. 

I have lunch with two old guys I knew when I was a kid and we talk for two hours and Ukraine is never mentioned or former presidents. Just recollections and insistent arguments about trivia that would be meaningful to only about four other people on earth, but it’s enormously enjoyable to us. 

My boyhood friend Bob and his wife, Marie, and I had dinner last week and thanks to friendly hectoring and teasing, we laughed the whole time except when we had food in our mouths. There is no point in lying unconscious on the floor while a waiter does CPR, it would be unfair to others who are enjoying their meals. And think of the headline: 79-YEAR-OLD MAN CHOKES ON POTATO WHILE GUFFAWING. And the minister conducting the funeral, hearing people whisper, “It was the joke about the penguins on the ice floe.”