Dear Editor,
People have often said they have many associates but few friends. Others have colleagues at work but very few are considered friends.
I attended Sunday School in the 1950s at St Philip’s Anglican Church where I met Noel Phillips. At the same time I was a student at the St Philip’s Primary School where Alvin Barratt and I were classmates.
As if dictated by fate, the three of us joined the Postal Service as apprentices where we worked for the greater part of our lives. (Alvin migrated to the USA in 1978.)
Editor, we became friends, were inseparable and earned the nickname ‘The Three Musketeers.’ Although Alvin migrated, we remained friends for decades until his death in 2009.
The dictionary describes a friend as “someone who is personally well known by oneself and for whom one holds warm regard.” A friend can be depended upon, trusted and is someone who supports you in your hour of need.
Editor, I say all of this because I find the word ‘friend’ being used loosely and incorrectly.
Very often, stories are carried in the print media about someone being stabbed, shot or otherwise killed by his ‘friend.’ I would pause, think of Noel and Alvin and wonder why this word was being misused.
These people were acquaintances or were merely sharing a bottle of alcohol when an argument erupted resulting in some fatality.
Alvin, Noel and I had many differences of opinion, but they never escalated into anything where expletives were used.
So Editor, when you describe someone who maimed or killed another as his ‘friend’ you are sullying something I cherished for decades with the other two “musketeers.”
Yours faithfully,
L Dunsford Dickson
