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We've all heard those lines and rhymes people use to describe friendship, but do we ever stop to think, "What do they mean?" Here's one that makes no sense to me. "A friend in need is a friend in deed." How does being in need make someone a friend? Shouldn't he have mentioned that the needy friend wouldn't need to be needy constantly? Since that's all he said, it seems the guy who said this just needs to be needed, I guess.

I don't know who originally said, "a friend in need is a friend in deed, but more than likely this saying was intended to be wise at the time it was said. Today it would have an enirely different meaning and would be too strange to define the meaning of a friend as one who is needy. The guy who said that must have been enabling. Needy people can take up all your time, so these days people are more likely to use sayings like this to describe the needy type.

"A friend in need will have friends who flee."

Okay, I suppose that I shouldn't make up sayings, but you know what I mean? So many sayings have changed with the changing times, like this one that everyone's used a time or two.

"To err is human, but to forgive is divine."

Now there's a friendship saying we should all memorize, but today we might decide to say it the way Berton Averre did which seems to fit more into our society.

"To err is dysfunctional, to forgive co-dependent."

I suppose that time changes those sayings we use to describe our friendship issues, and those issues can be different for men than they are for women. If you don't think that's true, then just read what Anne Morrow Lindbergh said. "Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces."

In a way I guess she's right, but sometimes the ironic twist of friendships are recorded again and again no matter how much time goes by, like this one said by Mark Twain.

"I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them."

Why would he use the words friend and criminal in the same saying? Could it be that some of his friends were criminals? Maybe he means the same thing George Carlin said more recently.

"One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends is that three out of four murders are committed by people who know the victim." How ironic is seems to me that people would make up sayings that express friendship and murder at the same time. You'd think that would be the only two friendship twist of fate sayings

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