Netnet Camomot IF there’s one Christmas gift that you should wish for, it’s this: to find out who your real friends are and to discern where people’s comments are coming from. That’s one gift I received recently and because of that, my Christmas is now complete. A similar thing happened two years ago. It was an answered prayer after so many years of asking for the impossible. And it arrived on the 23rd, two days before Christmas. It was possible after all. I’m celebrating the second anniversary of that found freedom today. A gift can be in any form--time, kindness, sharing your talent. If a person’s gift for you are money and material things, but then he destroys you when you’re not around, that’s not a gift but a bribe to keep you silent, to make you look back to the gift and say, Well, he gave me a Porsche, I don’t have the right to complain. People with lots of moolah should try living without a single cent to their name, to find out if these so-called friends will still be around to make sipsip to them. Retired politicians who have not successfully pushed their wife and children to join the political fun run or who were not able to convince the madlang pehpohl to vote for their wife and children, have learned their lesson the hard way. They may now be impoverished, borrowing money from incumbent politicians who would insult the retired before giving them money. Insults like, Tanga man gud ka, di ka wise, mao ni ron pobre ka na. If you’ve been reading this column since November 2010 when I started writing for Mindanao Gold Star Daily, you should know by now that if there’s one word that can never be used to describe me, it’s this: nice. I’m not nice. I can never be nice. I’m not sweet sixteen, sugar and spice and everything nice. If ever someone will make the mistake of convincing me to play Mama Mary in a nativity scene, both of us--I and the one who convinced me--will be kicked outta there by the Three Kings’ camels. Friends also know that I’m not nice. They have learned to accept me as I am and if ever anyone outside our circle would ask why I am the way I am, they’d say, Ingon ana na gyud na si Netnet. And that’s it, no PS required. Therefore, a person who needs a PS in trying to understand me is not a friend. So, don’t ever expect me to kiss your a** because you’re rich and famous unless you’re Brad Pitt. But then, kissing his a** means we’re in bed and... censored! There are two kinds of people: peacemakers and war freaks. A friend has been truly my peacemaker although she tends to be a war freak when it comes to her own personal and business deals. One evening while I was at Pryce Plaza listening to former Energy Secretary Icot Petilla’s speech, she called me up to tell me about this mutual friend whom she wanted banished to the “Star Wars” sand dunes. OK, not those dunes. But you get the point. Anywhere but here. And I said, No, I can’t do that. I opted to wait for their issue to cool down. There are friendships and relationships that are worth keeping, and there are those you’d rather store in the bodega and dust them off later when you’ll be blessed with selective amnesia. That friend and the mutual friend have the kind of friendship that requires selective amnesia--I know they can work out their issues in the end. There are only a few people in this world we can truly relate with, so before allowing issues to muddle these friendships, think first of what is worth keeping or not, no matter how many times you’ve made sumpa that friend and say, Never again! At least you now have different degrees of friendship: real and true friend, friend, friend-friend, friend kuno, as-if-friend, as-in-friend, and friend-daw-o. There’s this friend who’s now cold towards me. Whenever he sees me, he looks at me and doesn’t even say, Net! It’s an empty look, and I think I know why it has morphed to this. And then, someone else arrives, a friend of ours actually, and he’s over enthusiastic with his welcome for that friend. This has been happening for too many times already, if I were another kind of friend, I should have given up and say, Never again! But I’ve chosen to stay and to test his patience further. Most people don’t know what you’re made of. Of what you’re capable of doing. Of the trials and tribulations you have survived through. They have no idea. But you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. There’s no competition because in the end, you’ll be too busy trying to breathe till your last. And, so, while you‘re still breathing well, you sit back, relax, and watch people destroy themselves.