12/

It just occured to me that when I was younger (probably around 10 though I couldn't say for sure), my step sister who was a little older than me had started to run with a less than desireable crowd. They were immigrant Russians and I can't vouch for them either way, but I do know that it caused a riff between my step-mother and my father. My step mother had given up control of her oldest daughter and my father was still heavy handed in his new role as her dad. He was very forceful with Nikki that she was not to hang out with these people. They were trouble. Instead, in an attempt to deliver the same advice in a more timely fashion to his own son, he told me this:

"Drew, in life friends will come and go, but family is forever."

Of course I had no perspective at 10. I was simultaneously sure that I had kept both my friends and family my entire life (because in all practicality I had) and and also sure that neither was permanent (if for no other reason than death).

Well, the advice turned out to be wrong in a way that even invalidates its inverse. But what a simpering hypocritical bitch my father turned out to be.

So here's some folksy wisdom to replace it, should you have ever been given similar bad advice:

Pride is a weakness, no matter how much strength it takes.