Agreeing to disagree

For no particular reason, I've been contemplating the concept of friendship lately. It's just one of those things that zinged through my thought processes and hung.

I think some of my best friendships have been those predicated on disagreement. Not fighting disagreement, but respectful disagreement. Agreeing to disagree, if you will. This nearly always happens in the beginning of a relationship, the "feeling out" period, when both parties are deciding if the other is someone they want to know better, to socialize with, to call with a problem. Sometimes two people are so incompatible that there's no question that this just isn't going to happen. You stay on your side of town (church, boardroom), and I'll stay on mine.

Then there's the people where it's not incompatibility, but a touch of contentiousness. A little argument for argument's sake, an agreeing that there are two sides to everything (and yours is wrong, but I'm tired of trying to convince you otherwise), but you go on as friends. These are the people who have your back, whom you call in a crisis. Like siblings who fight tooth and nail--until one of them is threatened from the outside and then the defenses come up.

I don't know what it says about me and my best friends, but I want them to know: I've got their back. Yes, their entire back, not just part of it. I know, I know, it's a big back...