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Here’s a hypothetical situation I’d like you to consider.  You’ve got this friend who is, for lack of a better word, a career scumbag.  You knew this when you befriended him many years ago, but when you were both kids getting into fights, being loud and offensive in public, and generally pissing off anyone and everyone who crossed your path were your favorite pass times.  You were mostly compatible as friends back then but find yourself running on the strength of reminiscence and loyalty alone today.

You thought his stories of promiscuity, cheating, and heartbreak were funny and exciting. Secretly you were a little jealous. The more you listened to his stories and marveled wide-eyed at his conquests, the more you validated his cycle of sweet deception, sexual attainment, and brutal rejection of the opposite sex. He can go from 80’s mix-tape to telling the town about the stench of her privates in sixty seconds.

As a man you find his ability to perjure his way into a girl’s panties almost godlike. As a compassionate human being your association with him makes you feel embarrassed, and a little slimy.

When out on the town your friend makes it his personal goal to bad-mouth, mock, or offend everyone in the room. In the early days of the media’s “Operation Shock and Awe” on our generation’s minds, his brand of humor was edgy and pushed your comfort boundaries with him as well as the people he verbally ravaged;  but in the imposing shadow of South Park’s 11th season, the Don Imus situation, and a media that has turned offensiveness into a profitable commodity, your friend’s brand of humor is getting tired. When you acknowledge it at all it’s not with a dropped jaw and a look of shock, but with  rolled eyes, a shrug, and a yawn.

His biting words and venomous tongue have made him more enemies than friends through the course of your friendship, and more and more you find yourself forced to choose between him and the rest of the world.  Your sense of loyalty tells you to stick by his side while every molecule of decency, compassion, and common sense which comprises your mind and soul is telling you that your misplaced loyalty will have you follow him straight to a lonely Hell. It also tells you that he would not do the same for you.

The question I pose is as follows.  Would you stick by this individual, pretending that somehow you can affect him and reverse his malignancy? Or do you accept that some people grow apart; that your friendship had a good run, but the time has come to cash out?  Someone help me out.  This situation tears me apart, and I can’t afford a shrink.