George asked if we were friends, and without a moment’s hesitation, I said, Yes, of course! And then he asked how so, and I had to rely on a definition right out of my two volume Webster’s Universal Dictionary, 1936, which I had obtained through the mail in return for an empty bag of Planters Peanuts and a twenty-five cent coin when I was still in elementary school. One of my proudest possessions even today. To wit:

Dan King photo

1. One who is attached to another by affection or who entertains for another sentiments of esteem and respect, which leads him to desire his company and to seek to promote his happiness and prosperity.

George asked if that was it, and I had to admit that this was only the first definition of friend in my dictionary, and that there were five more uses listed, and even this one was somewhat shifty with an “or” right in the middle.

Another definition carries the implication that your friend is your other, and that you should treat your other as you treat yourself, because he or she is you and you are him of her, and I think we do, so we must be friends. But you should understand that the word friend is much like the word love and therefore has as many shades of meaning as there are people using the word.

Example, please, said George.

It was spring and we had flown to The Registry Hotel in Naples, Florida, where Nina was to attend annual meetings of some association of patent attorneys or other lawyers. We took Zina along, just 6 years old, and newly adopted by us, our first child.

About nine o’clock, after breakfast, while Nina went off to attend the formal meetings inside the hotel, Zina and I put on our bathing suits and walked out to the pool area, already warm in the sunlight. The pool area was devoid of people except for a blonde mother speaking British English to her blonde 6-year-old daughter and a pre-toddler in a big, black, four-wheeled pram. Her 6-year-old was making swift running passes close to the baby, evidently hoping that mum would turn her head long enough for the older one to tear the head off the baby and carry it to the bottom of the pool for a heart-to-heart talk about who had been queen for the last six years, and who was going to continue that way for the next six.

Zina, seeing another girl just her age, asked me if she could go over there and play with her, and I said, “Yes, of course, just walk over and say, ‘Can we be friends?’”

I will never forget the other girl’s response. She beamed with a broad smile, jumped up and down three times and said:

“Oh, yes! We’ll be best of friends. And that means we’ll fight a lot. And you’ll have to do whatever I tell you to do, whether you want to or not!”

Orrin Frink is a Kennebunkport resident. He can be reached at ofrink@gmail.com.